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THE STORY 

OF 

OUR COUNTRY 



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EVERY CHILD CAN READ 

EDITED BY 

REV. JESSE LYMAN HURLBUT, D.D. 



ILLUSTRATED 




THE JOHN C. WINSTON CO. 
PHILADELPHIA 



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Copyright, 19^0^ ^y 
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TABLE OF CONTENTS 



PAGE 

A Talk with the Young Reader 9 

CHAPTER I 
Columbus, the Great Sailor 

Bold Sailors of the Northern Countries — The Northmen 

— Columbus the Little Boy — Columbus and the Egg — 
He Crosses the Atlantic, Braves the Sea and Discovers 
New Land 15 

CHAPTER H 
Three Great Discoverers 

John and Sebastian Cabot — Balboa Discovers the Pacific 

— The Fountain of Youth and Ponce de Leon — The 
Naming of America 27 

CHAPTER HI 

Three Early Heroes 

The Story of John Smith and First English Settlement — 
Miles Standish and the Pilgrims — Roger Williams, the 
Hero Preacher 36 

CHAPTER IV 

How the Dutch and Quakers Came to America 

Captain Hudson and His Ship, the Half Moon — The 
Trip up the Hudson — Adventures with the Indians — 
William Penn and the Quakers — How They Settled on 
the Delaware River 48 

I 



2 TABLE OF CONTENTS 

CHAPTER V. 
The Cavalier Colonies of the South 

PAGE 

The Cavaliers and Lords of England — They Settle in 
Virginia — The Catholics Come to Maryland — Strange 
Form of Government in Carolina — Paupers Settle 
Georgia — An Old Spanish Town in Florida ... 59 

CHAPTER VI 

The Red Men, How They Lived and were Treated 

They Were the First Americans — Their Strange Cus- 
toms and Manners — How They Followed a Trail — 
How they Fought — Indian Massacres 70 

CHAPTER VII 

Royal Governors and Loyal Captains 

How the Governor was Treated in Connecticut — The 
Charter Oak — An Exciting Time in Virginia ... 81 

CHAPTER VIII 

Old Times in the Colonies 

When a Tallow Candle Gave the Light — Old-Time 
Houses — The Story of the Famous Hunter, and How 
he Escaped from the Indians 91 

CHAPTER IX 

A Hero of the Colonies 

Two Boys who Crossed the Mountains — Their Adven- 
tures with the Indians — George Washington, the Sur- 
veyor — Messenger to the French — An Old-Time Hero loi 

CHAPTER X 

The French and Indian War 

The Acadians — Their Home in Nova Scotia — Their 
Sufferings — ^The ,Story of Evangeline — Why the In- 
dians Helped the French — The Story of a Cruel War 112 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 3 

CHAPTER XI 
The Causes of the Revolution 

PAGE 

How the Trouble Began — The Americans Object to 
Paying Taxes on Various Articles — The Famous Bos- 
ton Tea Party — Battle of Lexington — Declaration of 
Independence 121 



CHAPTER XII 

Fighting for Freedom 

Washington the Commander in-Chief — Bunker Hill — 
The Wonderful Christmas — The Americans Succeed — 
They Meet Defeat —" Molly Stark a Widow"— Help 
from France 133 



CHAPTER XIII 

Paul Jones, the Naval Hero of the Revolution 

Old-Time Warships — A Daring Deed — A Great Sea 
Fight — The British Captain Surrenders 143 

CHAPTER XIV 

Marion, the Swamp Fox 

How the War Went in the South — The Patriots Hard to 
Find — The British Officers Eat Sweet Potatoes — Jack 
Davis' Adventure — General Greene and his Famous Re- 
treat — Cornwallis Surrenders — The War at an End . 153 

CHAPTER XV 

The Voyage of our Ship of State 

How the People Rule — Illustrated by a Story — Otir 
First Trial and Failure — Making a New Form of 
Government — A Nation of Thirteen States — The 
President — The Congress — The Judges 162 



4 TABLE OF CONTENTS 

CHAPTER XVI 
The End of a Noble Life 

PAGE 

Washington the First President — Beloved by Everyone 
— Benjamin Franklin's Last Hours — The Kind of 
Money They Used — How the Quarrel was Settled — 
Washington Dies 170 

CHAPTER XVH 

The Steamboat and the Cotton Gin 

The Power of Steam — Is a Boat Like a Duck — Who 
Thought of the First Steamboat — The Cotton Gin and 
How it Saves Labor — Where the Cotton Grows . . .176 

CHAPTER XVIII 

The English and Americans Fight Again 

How We Came to Quarrel with England — Protecting 
the American Sailor — Interesting Land Battles — 
Adventures at Sea— Peace is Made Again . . . .184 



CHAPTER XIX 

How THE Victims of the Alamo were Avenged 

How General Santa Anna Got into Trouble — Massacre 
of the Alamo — The Famous Samuel Houston — War 
with Mexico — The City of Mexico — Santa Anna is 
Defeated and United States is Victorious 193 

CHAPTER XX 

How Slavery Led to War 

Black and White Slaves — First Slaves Brought to Amer- 
ica in 1619 — Why the Slaves were Used in the South 
— Why the North did not Believe in Slavery — What 
the word Abolitionist Means — John Brown and Har- 
per's Ferry . . , 201 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 5 

CHAPTER XXI 
How Lincoln Became President 

PAGE 

The Ruler of the Republic — The President Chosen from 
the People — Why the People Liked Him — Lincoln's 
School Days — The North and South Differ — Lincoln, 
the Great War President 208 

CHAPTER XXH 

The Great Civil War 

What Civil War is — Where the War was Fought — Bat- 
tle of Bull Run — " Stonewall " Jackson — General 
Ulysses S. Grant and How He Came to Command the 
Army — His "Unconditional Surrender" Message — 
Battle of Gettysburg 215 

CHAPTER XXHI 

War on Sea and Land 

Fight Between the " Cheesebox " and the Ram — How the 
Monitor Won the Fight — The Battle "Above the 
Clouds "— Battle of the Wilderness — Sherman's March 
to the Sea — Richmond Surrenders and the War 



Closes 



225 



CHAPTER XXIV 

The Waste of War and the Wealth of Peace 

What is Seen on the Picture of History — A Reign of 
Peace in America — The Ocean Cable and the Railroad 
— Alaska and its Treasures — The Burning of Chicago 
and other Disasters — Edison and His Work — The 
Triumphs of Electricity 234 

CHAPTER XXV 

The Marvels of Invention 

Professor Morse, the Famous Inventor — His Struggles 
and His Success — The First Message — Telephone and 
Other Inventions of Electricity — New Ideas in Ma- 
chinery and the Comfort they Bring 242 



6 TABLE OF CONTENTS 

CHAPTER XXVI 

HOW THE CENTURY ENDED FOR THE UNITED STATES 

PAGB 

The Nation's Birthplace — Centennial Exhibition and Co- 
lumbian World's Fair — Our People's Progress — The 
Indians— Trouble in Cuba— War with Spain— Santiago 
and its Fleet — Dewey at Manila. 253 

CHAPTER XXVII 

HOW A HUNTER BECAME PRESIDENT 266 

Assassination of President McKinley— Theodore Roose- 
velt's Great Ride— His Election by the People— The 
Panama Canal— Roosevelt Declines Re-election and 
Goes to Africa. 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



Steam Shovel at Work in Culebra Cut, Panama 

Canal Frontispiece 

PAGE 

Columbus and the Egg 25 

Washington Crossing the Delaware 137 

The Battle of New Orleans 191 

The Storming of Chapultepec 199 

The Wright Brothers and Their Famous Aero- 
plane 242 

Custer's Last Fight 258 

Roosevelt Surprised by a Giant Hippopotamus . . 266 



A TALK WITH THE YOUNG READER 

ABOUT THE HISTORY OF OUR 

COUNTRY 

IF any of the readers of this book should have 
the chance to take a railroad ride over the 
vast region of the United States, from the At- 
lantic to the Pacific Ocean, from the Great Lakes 
to the Gulf of Mexico, they would see a wonder- 
ful display of cities and towns, of factories and 
farms, and a great multitude of men and women 
actively at work. They would behold, spread out 
on every side, one of the busiest and happiest lands 
the sun shines upon. Here and there, amid the 
miles on miles of farms, they might see a forest, 
here and there a wild beast, here and there a red- 
faced Indian, one of the old people of the land; 
but these would be almost lost In the rich and pros- 
perous scene. 

If our young traveler knew nothing of history 
he might fancy that It had been always this way, 
or that It had taken thousands of years for all 
those cities to be built and these great fields to be 
cleared and cultivated. Yet If he had been here 



lo THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

only three hundred years ago he would have seen a 
very different sight. He could not then have gone 
over the country by railroad, for such a thing had 
never been thought of. He could not have gone 
by highroad, for there was not a road of any kind 
in the whole length and breadth of the land. No- 
where in this vast country would he have seen a 
city or town; nowhere a ploughed field, a farm- 
house, or a barn ; nowhere a horse, cow, or sheep ; 
nowhere a man with a white or a black face. In- 
stead of great cities he would have seen only clus- 
ters of rude huts; instead of fertile farms, only vast 
reaches of forest; instead of tame cattle, only wild 
and dangerous beasts; instead of white and black 
men, only red-skinned savages. 

Just think of it! All that we see around us Is 
the work of less than three hundred years! No 
doubt many of you have read in fairy tales of won- 
derful things done by the Genii of the East, of 
palaces built in a night, of cities moved miles 
away from their sites. But here is a thing as 
wonderful and at the same time true, a marvel 
wrought by men mstead of magical beings. These 
great forests have fallen, these great fields have 
been cleared and planted, these great cities have 
risen, these myriads of white men have taken the 
place of the red men of the wild woods, and all 
within a period not longer than three times the life 
of the oldest men now living. Is not this as won- 



A TALK WITH THE YOUNG READER ii 

derful as the most marvelous fairy tale? And is 
it not better to read the true tale of how this was 
done than stories of the work of fairies and ma- 
gicians? Let us forget the Genii of the East; 
men are the Genii of the West, and the magic of 
their work is as great as that we read of in the 
fables of the '' Arabian Nights." 

The story of this great work is called the ** His- 
tory of the United States." This story you have 
before you in the book you now hold. You do not 
need to sit and dream how the wonderful work of 
building our noble nation was done, for you can 
read it all here in language simple enough for the 
youngest of you to understand. Here you are 
told how white men came over the seas and found 
beyond the waves a land none of them had ever 
seen before. You are told how they settled on 
these shores, cut down the trees and built villages 
and towns, fought with the red men and drove 
them back, and made themselves homes in the 
midst of fertile fields. You are told how others 
came, how they spread wider and wider over the 
land, how log houses grew into mansions, and vil- 
lages into cities, and how at length they fought for 
and gained their liberty. 

Read on and you will learn of more wonderful 
things still. The history of the past hundred 
years is a story of magic for our land. In it you 
will learn of how the steamboat was first made 



12 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

and In time came to be seen on all our rivers and 
lakes; of how the locomotive was Invented and 
railroads were built, until they are now long 
enough In our country to go eight times round the 
earth; of the marvels of the telegraph and tele- 
phone — the talking wire; of the machines that 
rumble and roar In a thousand factories and work 
away like living things, and of a multitude of mar- 
vels which I cannot begin to speak of here. 

And you will learn how men kept on coming, 
and wars were fought, and new land was gained, 
and bridges were built, and canals were dug, and 
our people Increased and spread until we came to 
be one of the greatest nations on the earth, and our 
cities grew until one of them was the largest In the 
world except the vast city of London. All this 
and more you may learn from the pages of this 
book. It Is written for the boys and girls of our 
land, but many of their fathers and mothers may 
find It pleasant and useful to read. 

There are hundreds who do not have time to 
read large histories, which try to tell all that has 
taken place. For those this little history will be 
of great service. In showing them how, from a few 
half-starved settlers on a wild coast, this great na- 
tion has grown up. How men and women have 
, come to it over the seas as to a new Promised 
Land. How they have ploughed its fields, and 
gathered its harvests, and mined its iron and gold, 



A TALK WITH THE YOUNG READER 13 

and built thousands of workshops, and fed the 
nations with the food they did not need for them- 
selves. Year by year it has grown in wealth, until 
now it is the richest courtry in the world. Great 
it is, and greater it will be. But I need say no 
more. The book has its own story to tell. I only 
lay this beginning before. you as a handy stepping- 
stone into the history itself. By its aid you may 
cross the brook and wander on through the broad 
land which lies before you. 



THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 
CHAPTER I 

COLUMBUS, THE GREAT SAILOR 

IF any of my young readers live in Chicago they 
will remember a wonderful display In that city 
in 1893. Dozens of great white buildings 
rose on the shore of the lake, as beautiful as fairy 
palaces, and filled with the finest of goods of all 
kinds, which millions of people came to see. 

Do you know what this meant? It was what is 
called a World's Fair, and was in honor of a won- 
derful event that took place four hundred years 
before. 

Some of you may think that white men have al- 
ways lived in this country. I hope you do not all 
think so, for this Is not the case. A little more 
than four hundred years ago no white man had 
ever seen this country, and none knew that there 
was such a country on the face of the earth. 

It was in the year 1492, that a daring sailor, 
named Christopher Columbus, crossed a wide 
ocean and came to this new and wonderful land. 
Since then men have come here by the millions, 
and the mighty nation of the United States has 
grown up with Its hundreds of towns and cities. 

15 



1 6 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

In one of these, which bears the name of Chicago, 
the grand Columbian World's Fair was held, in 
honor of the finding of America by the great nav- 
igator four hundred years before. 

This is what I have set out to tell you about. I 
am sure you will all be glad to know how this 
broad and noble land, once the home of the wild 
red men, was found and made a home Jor the white 
people of Europe. 

Some of you may have been told that America 
was really discovered more than four hundred years 
before Columbus was born. So it was. At that 
time some of the bold sailors of the northern 
countries of Europe, who made the stormy ocean 
their home, and loved the roll of the waves, had 
come to the frozen island of Iceland. And a ship 
from Iceland had been driven by the winds to a 
land in the far west which no man had ever seen 
before. Was this not America ? 

Soon after, in the year looo, one of these 
Northman, named Leif Ericson, also known as 
Leif the Lucky, set sail for this new land. There 
he found wild grapes growing, and from them he 
named It Vinland. This In our language would 
be called Wineland. 

After him came others, and there was fighting 
with the red men, whom they called Skrellings. 
In the end the Northmen left the country, and be- 
fore many years all was forgotten about it. Only 



COLUMBUS, THE GREAT SAILOR 17 

lately the story has been found again In some old 
writings. And so time went on for nearly five 
hundred years more, and nothing was known in 
Europe about the land beyond the seas. 

Now let us go from the north to the south of 
Europe. Here there is a kingdom called Italy, 
which runs down Into the Mediterranean Sea al- 
most In the shape of a boot. On the western 
shore of this kingdom Is a famous old city named 
Genoa, In which many daring sailors have dwelt; 
and here, long ago, lived a m.an named Columbus, 
a poor man, who made his living by carding wool. 

This poor wool-carder had four children, one of 
whom (born about 1436) he named Christopher.' 
Almost everybody who has been at school in the 
world knows the name of this little ItaHan boy, for 
he became one of the most famous of men. 

Many a boy In our times has to help his father 
in his shop. The great Benjamin Franklin began 
work by pouring melted tallow into moulds to make 
candles. In the same way little Columbus had to 
comb wool for his father, and very likely he got as 
tired of wool as Franklin did of candles. 

The city he lived in was full of sailors, and no 
doubt he talked to many of them about life on the 
wild waters, and heard so many stories of danger 
and adventure that he took the fancy to go to sea 
himself. 

At any rate we are told that he became a sailor 



i8 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

when only fourteen years old, and made long and 
daring voyages while he was still young. Some of 
those were in Portuguese ships down the coast of 
Africa, of which continent very little was known 
at that time. He went north, too; some think as 
far as Iceland. Who knows but that he was told 
there of what the Northmen had done? 

Columbus spent some time In the island of Ma- 
deira, far out in the Atlantic ocean, and there the 
people told him of strange things they had seen. 
These had come over the seas before the west 
winds and floated on their island shores. Among 
them were pieces of carved wood, and canes so 
long that they would hold four quarts of wine be- 
tween their joints. And the dead bodies of two 
men had also come ashore, whose skins were the 
color of bronze or copper. 

These stories set Columbus thinking. He was 
now a man, and had read many books of travel, 
and had studied all that was then known of geog- 
raphy. For a time he lived by making maps 
and charts for ship captains. This was In the 
city of Lisbon, In Portugal, where he married and 
settled down and had little boys of his own. 

At that time some of the most learned people 
had odd notions about the earth. You may have 
seen globes as round as an orange, with the coun- 
tries laid out on them. But the people then had 



COLUMBUS, THE GREAT SAILOR 19 

never seen such a globe, and the most of them 
thought that the earth was as flat as a table, and 
that any one who sailed too far over the ocean 
would come to the edge of the earth and fall off. 

This seems very absurd, does It not? But you 
must remember that people then knew very little 
about the earth they lived on, and could not under- 
stand how people could keep on a round globe like 
flies on a ball of glass. 

But there were some who thought the earth to 
be round, and Columbus was one of these. 

At that time silk and spices and other rich goods 
were brought from China and India, thousands of 
miles to the east, by caravans that traveled over- 
land. Columbus thought that by sailing west, 
over the broad Atlantic, he would come to these 
far countries, just as a fly may walk around the sur- 
face of an orange, and come to the place it started 
from. 

The more Columbus thought about this, the 
more certain he became that he was right. He 
was so sure of it that he set out to try and make 
other people think the same way. He wanted 
ships with which to sail across the unknown seas to 
the west, but he had no money of his own to buy 
them with. 

Ah ! what a task poor Columbus now had. For 
years and years he wandered about among the 



20 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

kings and princes of Europe, but no one would be- 
lieve his story, and many laughed at him and 
mocked him. 

First he tried Genoa, the city where he was born, 
but the people there told him he was a fool or had 
lost his senses. 

Then he went to the king of Portugal. This 
king was a rascal, and tried to cheat him. He got 
his plans from him, and sent out a vessel in secret, 
hoping to get the honor of the discovery for him- 
self. But the captain he sent was a coward and 
was scared by the rolling waves. He soon came 
back, and told the king that there was nothing to 
be found but water and storm. King John, of 
Portugal, was very sorry afterward that he had 
tried to rob Columbus of his honor. 

Columbus was very angry when he heard what 
the king had done. He left Portugal for Spain, 
and tried to get the king and queen of that coun- 
try to let him have ships and sailors. But they 
were at war with a people called the Moors, and 
had no money to spare for anything but fighting 
and killing. 

Columbus stayed there for seven long years. 
He talked to the wise men, but they made sport of 
him. *' If the earth is round," they said, " and 
you sail west, your ships will go down hill, and 
they will have to sail up hill to come back. No 
ship that was ever made can do that. And you 



COLUMBUS, THE GREAT SAILOR 21 

may come to places where the waters boil with the 
great heat of the sun; and frightful monsters may 
rise out of the sea and swallow your ships and your 
men." Even the boys in the street got to laughing 
at him and mocking him as a man who had lost his 
wits. 

After these many years Columbus got tired of 
trying in Spain. He now set out for France, to 
see what the king of that country would do. He 
sent one of his brothers to England to see its king 
and ask him for aid. 

He was now so poor that he had to travel along 
the dusty roads on foot, his little son going with 
him. One day he stopped at a convent called La 
Rabida, to beg some bread for his son, who was 
very hungry. 

The good monks gave bread to the boy, and 
while he was eating it the prior of the convent 
came out and talked with Columbus, asking him 
his business. Columbus told him his story. He 
told it so well that the prior believed in it. He 
asked him to stay there with his son, and said he 
would write to Isabella, the queen of Spain, whom 
he knew very well. 

So Columbus stayed, and the prior wrote a let- 
ter to the queen, and In the end the wandering 
sailor was sent for to come back to the king's court. 

Queen Isabella deserves much of the honor of 
the discovery of America. The king would not 



22 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

listen to the wandering sailor, but the queen of- 
fered to pledge her jewels to raise the money which 
he needed for ships and sailors. 

Columbus had won. After years and years of 
toll and hunger and disappointment, he was to 
have ships and sailors and supplies, and to be given 
a chance to prove whether It was he or the wise 
men who were the fools. 

But such ships as they gave him! Why, you 
can see far better ones every day, sailing down 
your rivers. Two of them did not even have 
decks, but were like open boats. With this small 
fleet Columbus set sail from Palos, a little port In 
Spain, on the 3d of August, 1492, on one of the 
most wonderful voyages that has ever been known. 

Away they went far out Into the " Sea of Dark- 
ness," as the Atlantic ocean was then called. Mile 
after mile, day after day, on and on they went, see- 
ing nothing but the endless waves, while the wind 
drove them steadily Into the unknown west. 

The sailors never expected to see their wives 
and children again. They were frightened when 
they started, and every day they grew more scared. 
They looked with staring eyes for the bleak fogs 
or the frightful monsters of which they had been 
told. At one place they came upon great tracts 
of seaweed, and thought they were In shallow 
water and would be wrecked on banks of mud. 
Then the compass, to which they trusted, ceased 



COLUMBUS, THE GREAT SAILOR 23 

to point due north and they were more frightened 
than ever. Soon there was hardly a stout heart in 
the fleet except that of Columbus. 

The time came when the sailors grew half mad 
with fear. Some of them made a plot to throw 
Columbus overboard and sail home again. They 
would tell the people there that he had fallen Into 
the sea and been drowned. 

It was a terrible thing to do, was It not? But 
desperate men will do dreadful things. They 
thought one man had better die than all of them. 
Only good fortune saved the life of the great navi- 
gator. 

One day a glad sailor called his comrades and 
pointed over the side. A branch of a green bush 
was floating by with fresh berries on it. It looked 
as If It had just been broken off a bush. Another 
day one of them picked from the water a stick 
which had been carved with a knife. Land birds 
were seen flying over the ships. Hope came back 
to their hearts. They were sure now that land 
m.ust be near. 

October nth came. When night fell dozens 
of men were on the lookout. Each wanted to be 
the first to see land. About 10 o'clock that night, 
Columbus, who was looking out over the waves, 
saw a light far off. It moved up and down like a 
lantern carried in a man's hand. 

Hope now grew strong. Every eye looked out 



24 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

into the darkness. About two o'clock In the morn- 
ing came the glad cry of " Land! Land! " A 
gun was fired from the leading vessel. One of its 
sailors had seen what looked like land In the moon- 
light. You may be sure no one slept any more 
that night. 

When daylight came the joyful sailors saw be- 
fore them a low, green shore, on which the sun- 
light lay In beauty; men and women stood on it, 
looking in wonder at the ships, which they thought 
must be great white-winged birds. They had 
never seen such things before. We can hardly 
think what we would have done if we had been in 
their place. 

When the boats from the ships came to the 
shore, and Columbus landed, clad In shining armor, 
and bearing the great banner of Spain, the simple 
natives fell to the ground on their faces. They 
thought the gods had come from heaven to visit 
them. 

Some of the red-skinned natives wore ornaments 
of gold. They were asked by signs where they 
had got this gold, and pointed south. Soon all 
were on board again, the ships once more spread 
their sails, and swiftly they flew southward before 
the wind. 

Day by day, as they went on, new islands arose, 
some small, some large, all green and beautiful. 
Columbus thought this must be India, which he 



COLUMBUS, THE GREAT SAILOR 25 

had set out to find, and he called the people 
Indians. He never knew that it was a new conti- 
nent he had discovered. 

The month of March of the next year came be- 
fore the little fleet sailed again into the port of 
Palos. The people hailed it with shouts of joy, 
for they had mourned their friends as dead. 

Fast spread the news. When Columbus en- 
tered Barcelona, where the king and queen were, 
bringing with him new plants, birds and animals, 
strange weapons, golden ornaments, and some of 
the red-skinned natives, he was received as if he 
had been a king. He was seated beside the king; 
he rode by his side in the street; he was made a 
grandee of Spain; all the honors of the kingdom 
were showered on him. 

We here recall the Incident of Columbus and 
the egg. A dinner was given in his honor and 
many great men were there. The attention Co- 
lumbus received made some people jealous. One 
of them with a sneer asked Columbus if he did 
not think any one else could have discovered the 
Indies. In answer Columbus took an egg from a 
dish on the table and handing It to the questioner 
asked him to make It stand on end. 

After trying several times the man gave It up. 
Columbus, taking the egg In his hand, tapping it 
gently on one end against the top of the table so as 
to break the shell slightly, made It balance. 



26 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

'' Any one could do that," said the man. " So 
any one can discover the Indies after I have shown 
him the way," said Columbus. 

It was his day of pride and triumph. Poor 
Columbus was soon to find out how Spain treated 
those who had given to it the highest honor and 
the greatest riches. Three times again he sailed 
to the New World, and once a base Spanish gov- 
ernor sent him back to Spain with chains upon his 
limbs. Those chains he kept hanging in his room 
till he died, and asked that they should be buried 
with him. 

They who had once given him every honor, now 
treated him with shameful neglect. He who had 
ridden beside the king and dined with the highest 
nobles of Spain, became poor, sad and lonely. 

He died in 1506, fourteen years after his great 
discovery. 

Then Spain, which had treated him so badly, 
began to honor his memory. But it came too late 
for poor Columbus, who had been allowed to die 
almost hke a pauper, after he had made Spain the 
richest country in Europe. 



CHAPTER II 

THREE GREAT DISCOVERERS 

VERY likely some of the readers of this 
book have asked their fathers or mothers 
how Spain came to own the islands of 
Cuba and Porto Rico, whose people they treated 
so badly that the United States had to go to war a 
few years ago and take these islands from Spain. 
Of course, you all know how the battleship Maine 
was blown up in the harbor of the city of Havana, 
and nearly all its brave sailors went to the bottom 
and were drowned. That was one reason why we 
went to war. If you should ask me that question, 
I would say that these were some of the islands 
which Columbus found, when he sailed into those 
sunny seas four centuries ago. They were settled 
by Spaniards, who killed off all their people and 
have lived on them ever since. There they have 
raised sugar cane, and tobacco, and coffee, and also 
oranges and bananas and all kinds of fine fruits. 
They might have kept on owning these islands 
and raising these fruits for many years to come, if 
they had not been so cruel to the people that they 
rose against them, and with the help of the United 

27 



28 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

States Government the Islands were taken from 
Spain. 

When Columbus told the nobles and people of 
Spain of his wonderful discovery, and showed them 
the plants and animals, the gold and other things, 
he had found on these far-off islands, it made a 
great excitement in that country. 

You know how the finding of gold In Alaska 
has sent thousands of our own people to that cold 
country after the shining yellow metal. In the 
same way the gold which Columbus brought back 
sent thousands of Spaniards across the wide seas 
to the warm and beautiful Islands of which the 
great sailor told them, where they hoped to find 
gold like stones In our streets. 

Dozens of ships soon set sail from Spain, carry- 
ing thousands of people to the fair lands of the 
west, from which they expected to come back laden 
with riches. At the same time two daring sailors 
from England, John Cabot and his son Sebastian, 
crossed the ocean farther north, and found land 
where the Northmen had found it five hundred 
years before. In the seas Into which the Cabots 
sailed, great fish were so plentiful that the ships 
could hardly sail through them, and bears swam 
out in the water and caught the fish In their mouths. 
That was certainly a queer way of fishing. 

When the Cabots came back and told what they 



THREE GREAT DISCOVERERS 29 

had seen, you may be sure the daring fishermen of 
Europe did not stay long at home. Soon numbers 
of their stout httle vessels were crossing the ocean, 
and most of them came back so full of great cod- 
fish that the water almost ran over their decks. 

Do you not think these fishermen were wiser 
than the Spaniards, who went everywhere seeking 
for gold, and finding very little of it? Gold is 
only good to buy food and other things; but if 
these can be had without buying they are better 
still. At any rate, the hardy fishermen thought so, 
and they were more lucky in finding fish than the 
Spaniards were In finding gold. 

Thus the years passed on, and more and more 
Spaniards came to the Islands of Cuba and His- 
paniola (which is now known as Hayti or San Do- 
mingo). And some of them soon began to sail 
farther west In search of new lands. Columbus, 
In his last voyage, reached the coasts of South 
America and Central America and other Spanish 
ships followed to those new shores. 

I might tell you many wonderful things about 
these daring men. One of them was named 
Balboa, whose story you will be glad to hear, for 
It Is full of strange events. This man had gone 
to the island of Hispanlola to make his fortune, but 
he found there only bad fortune. He had to work 
on a farm, and in time he became so poor and 



30 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

owed so much money that It seemed as if he could 
never get out of debt. In fact he was in sad 
straits. 

No doubt the people who had lent him money 
often asked him to pay it back again, and Balboa, 
who got into a worse state every day, at length 
took an odd way to rid himself of his troubles. A 
ship was about to set sail for the west, and the poor 
debtor managed to get carried aboard it in a bar- 
rel. This barrel came from his farm and was sup- 
posed to contain provisions, and it was not till they 
were far away from land that it was opened and a 
living man was found in it instead of salt beef or 
pork. 

When the captain saw him he was much aston- 
ished. He had paid for a barrel of provisions, 
and he found something which he could not well 
eat. He grew so angry at being cheated that he 
threatened to leave Balboa on a desert island, but 
the poor fellow got on his knees and begged so 
hard for his life that the captain at length forgave 
him. But he made him work to pay his way, and 
very likely used the rope's end to stir him up. 

Of course you have learned from your geogra- 
phies where the Isthmus of Darien (now called 
Panama) is, that narrow strip of land that is like 
a string tying together the great continents of 
North and South America. It was to the town of 
Darien, on this Isthmus, that the ship made its 



THREE GREAT DISCOVERERS 31 

way, and here Balboa made a surprising discovery. 
Some of the Indian chiefs told him of a mighty 
ocean which lay on the other side of the Isthmus, 
and that beyond that ocean was the wonderful 
land of gold which the Spaniards wished to find. 

What would you have done if you had been in 
Balboa's place, and wanted gold to pay your debts? 
Some of you, I think, would have done what he 
did. You would have made your way Into the 
thick forest and cHmbed the rugged mountains of 
the Isthmus, until, like Balboa, you got to the top 
of the highest peak. And, like him, you would 
have been filled with joy when you saw In the far 
distance the vast Pacific ocean. Its waves glittering 
in the summer sun. 

Here was glory; here was fortune. The poor 
debtor had become a great discoverer. Before his 
eyes spread a mighty ocean, its waves beating on 
the shore. He hurried with his men down the 
mountain sides to this shining sea, and raised on 
Its shores the great banner of Spain. And soon 
after he set sail on its waters for Peru, the land of 
gold. But he did not get very far, for the stormy 
weather drove him back. 

Poor Balboa ! he was to win fame, but not for- 
tune, and his debts were never to be paid. A jeal- 
ous Spanish governor siezed him, condemned him 
as a traitor, and had his head cut off in the market 
place. And so ended Balboa's dream of gold and 



32 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

glory. I could tell you of other wonderful ad- 
ventures in these new lands. There is the story 
of Cortez, who found the great kingdom of Mex- 
ico, and conquered it with a few hundred Spaniards 
in armor of steel. And there is the story of 
Pizarro, who sailed to Peru, Balboa's land of gold, 
and won it for Spain, and sent home tons of silver 
and gold. But these stories have nothing to do 
with the history of the United States, so we must 
pass them by and go back to the early days of the 
country in which we dwell. 

The first Spaniard to set foot on what is now 
the United States was an old man named Ponce de 
Leon, who was governor of Porto Rico. If he 
had lived until now he would have been on our soil 
while on that island, for it now belongs to the 
United States. But no one had dreamed of our 
great republic four hundred years ago. 

At that time there Avas a fable which many be- 
lieved, which said that somewhere in Asia was a 
wonderful Fountain of Youth. It was thought 
that everybody who bathed in its waters would 
grow young again. An old man in a moment 
would become as fresh and strong as a boy. De 
Leon wanted youth more than he did gold, and 
like all men at that time he thought the land he 
was in was part of Asia, and might contain the 
Fountain of Youth. He asked the Indians if they 
knew of such' a magic spring. The red men, who 



THREE GREAT DISCOVERERS 33 

wanted to get rid of the Spaniards, by whom they 
had been cruelly treated, pointed to the northwest. 

So, in the year 15 13, old Ponce de Leon took 
ship and sailed away in search of the magic spring. 
And not many days passed before, on Easter Sun- 
day, he saw before him a land so bright with flow- 
ers that he named it " Flowery Easter." It is still 
called Florida, the Spanish word for " flowery." 

I am sure none of my young readers believe in 
such a Fountain of Youth, and that none of you 
would have hunted for it as old De Leon did. Up 
and down that flowery land he wandered, seeking 
its wonderful waters. He found many sparkling 
springs, and eagerly drank of and bathed in their 
cool, liquid waves, but out of them all he came 
with white hair and wrinkled face. In the end he 
gave up the search, and sailed away, a sad old man. 
Some years afterwards he came back again. But 
this time the Indians fought with the white men, 
and De Leon was struck with an arrow, and hurt 
so badly that he soon died. So he found death in- 
stead of youth. Many people go to Florida in our 
own days in search of health, but Ponce de Leon is 
the only man who ever went there to find the mag- 
ical Fountain of Youth. 

About twenty-five years afterwards another 
Spaniard came to Florida. It was gold and glory 
he was after, not youth. This man, Fernando de 
Soto, had been in Peru with Pizarro, and helped 



34 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

him to conquer that land of gold. He now hoped 
to find a rich empire for himself in the north. 

So with nine ships and six hundred brave young 
men he sailed away from his native land. They 
were a gay and hopeful band, while their bright 
banners floated proudly from the mastheads, and 
waved in the western winds. Little did they 
dream of what a terrible fate lay before them. 

I think you will say that De Soto deserved a bad 
fate when I tell you that he brought bloodhounds 
to hunt the poor Indians, and chains to fasten on 
their hands and feet. That was the way the Span- 
iards often treated the poor red men. He brought 
also two hundred horses for his armed men to ride, 
and a drove of hogs to serve them for fresh meat. 
And in the ships were great iron chests, which he 
hoped to take back full of gold and other precious 
things. 

For two long years De Soto and his band 
traveled through the country, fighting Indians, 
burning their houses and robbing them of their 
food. But the Indians were brave warriors, and 
in one terrible battle the Spaniards lost eighty of 
their horses and many of their men. 

In vain De Soto sought for gold and glory. 
Not an ounce of the yellow metal was found; no 
mighty empire was reached. He did make one 
great discovery, that of the vast Mississippi River. 
But he never got home to tell of it, for he died on 



THREE GREAT DISCOVERERS 2S. 

its banks, worn out with his battles and marches, 
and was buried under its waters. His men built 
boats and floated down the great river to the Gulf 
of Mexico. Here, at length, they found Spanish 
settlements. But of that brave and gallant band 
half were dead, and the rest were so nearly starved 
that they were like living skeletons. 

We must not forget that humble Italian traveler 
and explorer, Amerigo Vespucci, who in 1499, saw 
the part of South America where lies the island of 
Trinidad. He afterwards reached the coast of 
Brazil. Some years later, when maps were made 
of the country he had visited, some one called it 
America. In later years this name was used for 
the whole continent. So what should have been 
called Columbia caftie to be called America. 



CHAPTER III 

THREE EARLY HEROES 

WHAT do you think of Captain John 
Smith, the hero of Virginia? Was he 
not a man to dream of, a true hero? 
Why, I feel half ashamed to say anything about 
him, for every one of you must know his story. I 
am sure all those who love good stories of adven- 
ture have read about him. 

John Smith was not the kind of man to work at 
a trade. He ran away from home when a boy, 
and became a wanderer over the earth. And a 
hard life he had of It. At one place he was rob- 
bed, and at another place was shipwrecked. Once 
he leaped overboard from a ship and swam ashore. 
Once again he fought with three Turks and killed 
all of them without help. Then he was taken pris- 
oner, and sold as a slave to a cruel Turk, who put 
a ring round his neck and made him work very 
hard. 

One day his master came out where he was at 
work and struck him with his whip. He soon 
found that John Smith was a bad man to whip. 
He hit the Turk a hard blow with the flail he was 

36 



THREE EARLY HEROES 37 

using, and killed him on the spot. Then he ran 
away, got to Russia, and in time made his way 
back to England. But England was too quiet a 
place for him. A ship was about to cross the sea 
to America and he volunteered to go In It. He 
had not half enough of adventure yet. Some peo- 
ple think that Captain Smith bragged a little, and 
did not do all he said. Well, that may be so. 
But it is certain that he was a brave and bold man, 
and just the man to help settle a new country 
where there were savage red men to deal with. 

The English were in no hurry in sending out set- 
tlers to the New World which Columbus had dis- 
covered. While the Spaniards were seeking gold 
and empires in the south, and the French were 
catching fish and exploring the rivers and lakes In 
the north, all the English did was to rob the 
Spanish ships and settlements, and to bring them 
negroes from Africa for slaves. 

But the time came, a hundred years after Amer- 
ica was discovered, when some of the English tried 
to form a settlement on the coast of North Caro- 
lina. Poor settlers ! When the next ship came 
out they were all gone. Not a soul of them could 
be found. Nothing was left but some letters they 
had cut into the bark of a tree. What became of 
them nobody ever knew. Likely enough they 
wandered away and were killed by the Indians. 

Nothing more was done until the year 1607, 



38 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

when the ship In which Captain John Smith had 
taken passage sailed up a bright and beautiful 
river in Virginia. It was the month of May, and 
the banks wxre covered with flowers. 

The colonists thought this a very good place to 
live In, so they landed and began to look around 
them. The river they called the James, and the 
place they named Jamestown. But instead of 
building a town and preparing for the future, as 
sensible men would have done, they began to seek 
for gold, and soon they were in no end of trouble. 
In a short time their food was all eaten. Then 
some of them were taken sick and died. Others 
were killed by the Indians. It looked as if this 
colony would come to grief as did the former one. 

So it would if it had not been for Captain 
Smith. He was only one man among a hundred, 
but he was worth more than all the rest of the 
hundred. He could not keep still, but hustled 
about, here, there and everywhere. Now he was 
exploring the country, sailing up the rivers or up 
the broad Chespeake Bay. Now he was talking 
with the Indians, getting food from them for the 
starving colonists. Now he was doing his best to 
make the men build houses and dig and plant the 
ground. You can see that John Smith had enough 
to keep him busy. He had many adventures with 
the Indians. At one time he was taken prisoner 
by them and was in terrible danger of being killed. 



THREE EARLY HEROES 39 

But he showed them his pocket compass, and when 
they saw the needle always pointing north, they 
though there must be magic in it. They were 
still more surprised when he sent one of them with 
a letter to his friends. They did not understand 
how a piece of paper could talk, as his paper 
seemed to do. 

But all this was not enough to save his life. 
The great chief Powhatan looked on him as the 
leader of these white strangers who had settled in 
his land. He wanted to get rid of them, and 
thought that if he killed the man of the magic 
needle and the talking paper they would certainly 
be scared and go away. 

So Captain Smith was tied hand and foot, and 
laid on the ground with his head on a log. And 
a powerful Indian stood near by with a great war 
club in his hand. Only a sign from Powhatan 
was needed, and down would come that club on 
the white man's head, and it would be all over 
with the brave and bold John Smith. 

Alas ! poor Captain Smith 1 There was no pity 
in Powhatan's eyes. The burly Indian twisted his 
fingers about the club and lifted it in the air. One 
minute more and it might be all over with the man 
who had killed three Turks in one fight. But be- 
fore that minute was over a strange thing took 
place. A young Indian girl came running wildly 
toward him, with her hair flying and her eyes wet 



40 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

with tears. And she flung herself on the ground 
and laid her head on that of the bound prisoner, 
and begged the chief to give him his life. 

It was Pocahontas, the pretty young daughter 
of Powhatan. She pleaded so pitifully that the 
chief's heart was touched, and he consented that 
the captive should live, and bade them take the 
bonds from his limbs. 

Do you not think this a very pretty story? 
Some say that it is not true, but I think very 
likely It is. At any rate, It Is so good that it 
ought to be true. Afterwards this warm-hearted 
Indian princess married one of the Virginians 
named John Rolfe and was taken to London and 
shown to the Queen. I am sorry to have to say 
that poor Pocahontas died there and never saw 
her native land again. 

Captain Smith got safely back to Jamestown. 
But his troubles were not at an end, for the colo- 
nists were as hard to deal with as the Indians. 
Some of them had found a kind of yellow stuff 
which they were sure was gold. They loaded a 
ship with this and sent it to England, thinking 
that they would all be rich. But the yellow stuff 
proved to be what Is known as '' a fool's gold," 
and worth no more than so much sand. Instead 
of becoming rich, they were laughed at as great 
fools. 

After a while Smith was made governor, and he 



THREE EARLY HEROES 41 

now tried a new plan to make the men work. He 
told them that If they did not work they should not 
eat. None of them wanted to starve, and they 
knew that John Smith meant just what he said, 
so they began to build houses and to dig the ground 
and plant crops. But some of them grumbled 
and some of them swore, and it was anything but 
a happy family. 

Captain Smith did not like this swearing, and 
he took a funny way to stop it. When the men 
came home at night each one who had sworn had 
a can of cold water poured down his sleeve for 
every time he had done so. Did any of my read- 
ers ever try that? If they did they would know 
why the men soon quit grumbling and swearing. 
All was beginning to go well in the colony when 
Captain Smith was hurt by some gunpowder that 
took lire and went off. He was hurt so badly that 
he had to go back to England. After that all 
went ill. 

As soon as their governor was gone the lazy 
men quit working. The profane men swore worse 
than before. They ate up all their food in a 
hurry, and the Indians would bring them no more. 
Sickness and hunger came and carried many of 
them to the grave. Some of them meddled with 
the Indians and were killed. There were five hun- 
dred of them when winter set In; but when spring 
came only sixty of them were alive. And all this 



42 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

took place because one wise man, Captain John 
Smith, was hurt and had to go home. 

The whole colony would have broken up if ships 
had not come out with more men and plenty of 
food. Soon after that, the people began to plant 
the ground and raise tobacco, which sold well in 
England. Many of them became rich, and the 
little settlement at Jamestown in time grew into 
the great colony of Virginia. 

This ends the story of the hero of Jamestown. 
Now let us say something about the hero of Ply- 
mouth. In the year 1620, thirteen years after 
Smith and his fellows sailed up the James River, 
a shipload of men and women came to a place 
called Plymouth, on the rocky coast of New Eng- 
land. It was named Plymouth by Captain Smith, 
who had been there before. A portion of the 
rock on which they first stepped, is still preserved 
and surrounded by a fence. 

These people are known as Pilgrims. They 
had been badly treated at home because they did 
believe in the teachings of the Church of England, 
and they had come across the stormy sea to find 
a place where they could worship God in their 
own way, without fear of being put in prison. 

With them came a soldier. He was named 
Captain Miles Standish. He was a little man, 
but he carried a big sword, and had a stout heart 
and a hot temper. While the Pilgrims came to 



THREE EARLY HEROES 43 

work and to pray, Captain Standish came to fight. 
He was a different man from Captain Smith, and 
would not have been able to deal with the lazy 
folks at Jamestown. But the Pilgrims were dif- 
ferent also. They expected to work and live by 
their labor, and they had no sooner landed on Ply- 
mouth Rock than they began to dig and plant, 
while the sound of the hammer rang merrily all 
day long, as they built houses and got ready for 
the cold winter. But after all their labor and 
carefulness, sickness and hunger came, as they had 
come to Jamestown, and by the time the winter 
was over, half the poor Pilgrims were dead. 

The Indians soon got to be afraid of Captain 
Standish. They were afraid of the Pilgrims, too, 
for they found that these religious men could 
fight as well as pray. One Indian chief, named 
Canonicus, sent them a bundle of arrows with a 
snake's skin tied round it. This was their way of 
saying that they were going to fight the Pilgrims 
and drive them from the country. But Governor 
Bradford filled the snake skin with powder and 
bullets and sent it back. When Canonicus saw 
this he was badly scared, for he knew well what 
It meant. He had heard the white men's guns, 
and thought they had the power of using thunder 
and lightning. So he made up his mind to let the 
white strangers alone. 

But the Pilgrims did not trust the red men. 



44 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

They put cannon on the roof of their log church, 
and they walked to church on Sunday like so many 
soldiers on the march, with guns in their hands 
and Captain Standish at their head. And while 
they were listening to the sermon one man stood 
outside on the lookout for danger. 

At one time some of the Indians made a plot 
to kill all the English. A friendly Indian told 
Captain Standish about it, and he made up his 
mind to teach them a lesson they would remember. 
He went to the Indian camp with a few men, and 
walked boldly into the hut where the plotting 
chiefs were talking over their plans. When they 
saw him and the men with him, they tried to 
frighten them. One of them showed the captain 
his knife and talked very boldly about it. 

A big Indian looked with scorn on the little 
captain. " Pah, you are only a little fellow, if 
you are a captain," he said. " I am not a chief, 
but I am strong and brave." 

Captain Standish was very angry, but he said 
nothing then. He waited until the next day, when 
he met the chiefs again. Then there was a quarrel 
and a fight, and the little captain killed the big 
Indian with his own knife. More of the Indians 
were slain, and the others ran for the woods. 
That put an end to the plot. 

There is one funny story told about Captain 
Standish. His wife had died, and he felt so lonely 



THREE EARLY HEROES 



45 



that he wanted another; so he picked out a pretty 
young woman named Priscilla Mullins. But the 
rough old soldier knew more about fighting than 
about making love, and he sent his young friend, 
John Alden, to make love for him. 

John told Priscilla's father what he had come 
for, and the father told Priscllla what John had 
told him. The pretty Priscllla had no fancy for 
the wrinkled old soldier. She looked at her fa- 
ther. Then she looked at John. Then she said: 
"Why don't you speak for yourself, John?'' 

John did speak for himself, and Priscllla be- 
came his wife. As for the captain, he married 
another woman, and this time I fancy he " spoke 
for himself." 

Miles Standish lived to be 70 years old, and to 
have a farm of his own and a house on a high hill 
near Plymouth. This is called Captain's Hill, 
and on it there is now a stone shaft a hundred 
feet high, with a statue of bold Captain Standish 
on Its top. 

We have now our third hero to speak of, Roger 
Williams. He was not a captain like the others, 
but a preacher; but he was a brave man, and 
showed In his way as much courage as either of 
the captains. 

The Pilgrims were quickly followed by other 
people, who settled at Boston and other places 
around Massachusetts Bay until there were a great 



46 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

many of them. These were called Puritans. 
They came across the seas for the same reason as 
the Pilgrims, to worship God in their own way. 

But they were as hard to live with as the peo- 
ple at home, for they wanted to force everybody 
else Into their way. Some Quakers who came to 
Boston were treated very badly because they had 
different ways from the Puritans. And one 
young minister named Roger Williams, who 
thought every man should have the right to wor- 
ship as he pleased, and said that the Indians had 
not been treated justly, had to flee Into the woods 
for safety. 

It was winter time. The trees were bare of 
leaves and the ground was white with snow. Poor 
Roger had to wander through the cold woods, 
making a fire at night with his flint and steel, or 
sometimes creeping Into a hollow tree to sleep. 

Thus he went on, half frozen and half starved, 
for eighty long miles, to the house of Massasolt, 
an Indian chief who was his friend. The good 
chief treated him well, for he knew, like all the 
Indians, what Roger Williams had tried to do for 
them. When spring time came, Massasolt gave 
his guest a canoe and told him where to go. So 
Roger paddled away till he found a good place to 
stop. This place he called Providence. A large 
city now stands there, and Is still called Provi- 
dence. 



THREE EARLY HEROES 47 

Roger Williams had some friends with him, and 
others soon came, and after a few years he had 
quite a settlement of his own. It was called 
Rhode Island. Such a settlement as that at Ply- 
mouth, at Boston, and at Providence, was called 
" a colony." 

He took care that the Indians should be treated 
well, and that no one should do them any harm, 
so they grew to love the good white man. And 
he said that every man in his colony should wor- 
ship God in the way he liked best, and no one 
should suffer on account of his manner of worship. 

It was a wonderful thing In those days, when 
there were wars going on In Europe about religion 
or the manner of worship, and everybody was 
punished who did not believe in the religion of the 
state. 

Do you not think that Roger Williams was as 
brave a man as John Smith or Miles Standlsh, and 
as much of a hero ? He did not kill any one. He 
was not that kind of a hero. But he did much to 
make men happy and good and to do justice to 
all men, and I think that is the best kind of a 
hero. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE DUTCH AND THE QUAKERS COME TO 
AMERICA 

I WONDER how many of my readers have 
ever seen the great city of New York. I 
wonder still more how many of them knew 
that it is the largest city in the world except Lon- 
don. But we must remember that London is ten 
times as old, so it can well afford to be larger. 

Why, if you should go back no farther than the 
time of your great-grandfather you would find no 
city of New York. All you would see would be a 
sort of large village on Manhattan Island, at the 
mouth of the Hudson River. And if you went 
back to the time of your grandfather's great grand- 
father, I fancy you v/ould see nothing on that is- 
land but trees, with Indian wigwams beneath them. 
Not a single white man or a single house would 
you see. 

In the year 1609, just two years after Captain 
Smith sailed into the James River, a queer-look- 
ing Dutch vessel came across the ocean and began 
to prowl up and down the coast. It was named 
the " Half Moon." It came from Holland, the 



THE DUTCH AND THE QUAKERS 49 

land of the Dutch, but Its captain was an English- 
man named Henry Hudson, who had done so 
many daring things that men called him '' the bold 
Englishman." 

What Captain Hudson would have liked to do 
was to sail across the United States and come out 
into the Pacific Ocean, and so make his way to the 
rich countries of Asia. Was not that a funny no- 
tion? To think that he could sail across three 
thousand miles of land and across great ranges of 
mountains ! 

But you must not think that Captain Hudson 
was crazy. Nobody then knew how wide Amer- 
ica was. For all they knew, it might not be fifty 
miles wide. Captain John Smith tried to get 
across it by sailing up James River. And Cap- 
tain Hudson fancied he might find some stream 
that led from one ocean to the other. 

So on he went up and down the coast looking 
for an opening. And after a while the " Half 
Moon" sailed into a broad and beautiful bay, 
where great trees came down to the edge of the 
water and red men paddled about in their canoes. 
Captain Hudson was delighted to see it. " It 
was," he said, '' as pleasant with grass and flow- 
ers as he had ever seen, and very sweet smells." 

This body of water was what we now call New 
York Bay. A broad and swift river runs into it, 
which is now called Hudson River, after Henry 



50 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

Hudson. The bold captain thought that this was 
the stream to go up if he wished to reach the 
Pacific Ocean. So, after talking as well as he 
could with the Indians in their canoes, and trading 
beads for corn, he set his sails again and started 
up the splendid river. Some of the Indians came 
on board the " Half Moon,'' and the Dutch gave 
them brandy, which they had never seen or tasted 
before. Soon they were dancing and capering 
about the deck, and one of them fell down so 
stupid with drink that his friends thought he was 
dead. That was their first taste of the deadly 
" fire water " of the whites, which has killed thou- 
sands of the red men since then. 

Captain Hudson and the Dutch no doubt 
thought that this was great fun. People often do 
much harm without stopping to think. But on 
up the river went the " Half Moon." 

At some places they saw fields of green corn 
on the water's edge. Farther on were groves of 
lofty trees, and for miles great cliffs of rock rose 
like towers. It was all very grand and beautiful. 

" It was a very good land to fall In with," said 
Captain Hudson, " and a pleasant land to see." 

As they sailed on and on, they came to moun- 
tains, which rose on both sides the river. After 
passing the mountains, the captain went ashore to 
visit an old chief, who lived In a round house built 
of bark. The Indians here had great heaps of 



THE DUTCH AND THE QUAKERS 51 

corn and beans. But what they hked best was 
roast dog. They roasted a dog for Captain Hud- 
son and asked him to eat it, but I do not know 
whether he did so or not. And they broke their 
arrows and threw them Into the fire, to shov/ that 
they did not mean to do harm to the white men. 

After leaving the good old chief the Dutch ex- 
plorers went on up the river till they reached a 
place about 150 miles above the sea, where the city 
of Albany now stands. Here the river became so 
narrow and shallow that Captain Hudson saw he 
could not reach the Pacific by that route, so he 
turned and sailed back to the sea again. 

A sad fate was that of Captain Hudson, " the 
bold Englishman." The next year he came again 
to America. But this time he went far to the 
north and entered the great body of water which 
we call Hudson Bay. He thought this would 
lead to the Pacific, and he would not turn back, 
though the food was nearly all gone. At last the 
crew got desperate, and they put the captain and 
some others into an open boat on the wide waters, 
and turned back again. Nothing more was ever 
heard of Captain Hudson, and he must have died 
miserably on that cold and lonely bay. 

But before his last voyage he had told the 
Dutch people all about Hudson River, and that the 
Indians had many fine furs which they would be 
glad to trade for beads, and knives, and other 



52 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

cheap things. The Dutch were fond of trading, 
and liked to make a good bargain, so they soon 
began to send ships to America. They built a fort 
and some log huts on Manhattan Island, and a 
number of them stayed there to trade with the 
red men. They paid the Indians for the island 
with some cheap goods worth about twenty-four 
dollars. I do not think any of you could guess 
how many millions of dollars that Island is worth 
now. For the great city of New York stands 
where the log huts of the Dutch traders once stood, 
and twxnty-four dollars would hardly buy as much 
land as you could cover with your hand. 

The country around Is now all farming land, 
where grain and fruit are grown, and cattle are 
raised. But then it was all woodland for hun- 
dreds of miles away, and in these woods lived 
many foxes and beavers and other fur-bearing ani- 
mals. These the Indians hunted and killed, and 
sold their furs to the Dutch, so that there was soon 
a good trade for both the red and the white men. 
The Dutch were glad to get the furs and the In- 
dians were as glad to get the knives and beads. 
More and more people came from Holland, and 
the town grew larger and larger, and strong brick 
houses took the place of the log huts, and In time 
there was quite a town. 

Men were sent from Holland to govern the 
people. Some of these men were not fit to gov- 



THE DUTCH AND THE QUAKERS 53 

ern themselves, and the settlers did not like to 
have such men over them. One of them was a 
stubborn old fellow named Peter Stuyvesant. He 
had lost one of his legs, and wore a wooden leg 
with bands of silver around it, so that he was 
called '' Old Silver Leg." 

While he was governor an important event took 
place. The English had a settlement in Virginia 
and another in New England, and they said that 
all the coast lands belonged to them, because the 
Cabots had been the first to see them. The 
Cabots came from Italy, but they had settled in 
England, and sailed in an English ship. 

So one day a small fleet of English vessels came 
into the bay, and a letter was sent on shore which 
said that all this land belonged to England and 
must be given up to them. The Dutch might 
stay there, but they would be under an English 
governor. Old Peter tore up the letter and 
stamped about in a great rage on his silver leg. 
But he had treated the people so badly that they 
would not fight for him, so he had to give up the 
town. 

The English called it New York, after the Duke 
of York, the king's brother. It grew and grew 
till it became a great and rich city, and sent 
ships to all parts of the world. Most of the 
Dutch stayed there, and their descendants are 
among the best people of New York to-day. Not 



54 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

long after these English ships came to New York 
Bay, other English ships came to a fine body of wa- 
ter, about 100 miles farther south, now called Del- 
aware Bay. Into this also runs a great stream of 
fresh water, called Delaware River, as wide as the 
Hudson. I think you will like to learn what 
brought them here. 

No doubt you remember what I said about some 
people called Quakers, who came to Boston and 
were treated very badly by the Puritans. Did any 
of my young readers ever see a Quaker? In old 
times you would have known them, for they 
dressed m a different way from other people. 
They wore very plain clothes and broad-brimmed 
hats, which they would not take off to do honor to 
king or noble. To-day they generally dress more 
like the people around them. 

If they were treated badly in Boston they were 
treated worse in England. Thieves and highway- 
men had as good a time as the poor Quakers. 
Some of them were put in jail and kept there for 
years. Some were whipped or put in the stocks, 
where low people called them vile names and 
threw mud at them. Indeed, these quiet people, 
who did no harm to any one, but were kind to 
others, had a very hard time, and were treated 
more cruelly than the Pilgrims and the Puritans. 

Among them was the son of a brave English 
admiral, who was a friend of the king and his 



THE DUTCH AND THE QUAKERS 55^ 

brother, the Duke of York. But this did not save 
him from being put in prison for preaching as a 
Quaker and wearing his hat in court. 

This was William Penn, from whom Pennsyl- 
vania was named. You may well fancy that the 
son of a rich admiral and the friend of a king did 
not like being treated as though he were a thief 
because he chose to wear a hat with a broad brim 
and to say " thee " and " thou," and because he 
would not go to the king's church. 

What is more, the king owed him money, which 
he could not or would not pay. He had owed 
this money to Admiral Penn, and after the ad- 
miral died he owed it to his son. 

William Penn thought it would be wise to do as 
the Pilgrims and Puritans had done. There was 
plenty of land in America, and it would be easy 
there to make a home for the poor Quakers where 
they could live in peace and worship God in the 
way they thought right. This they could not do 
in England. 

Penn went to the king and told him how he 
could pay his debt. If the king would give him a 
tract of land on the west side of the Delaware 
River, he would take it as payment in full for the 
money owing to his father. 

King Charles, who never had money enough for 
his own use, was very glad to pay his debts in this 
easy way. He told Penn that he could have all 



S6 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

the land he wanted, and offered him a tract that 
was nearly as large as the whole of England. 
This land belonged to the red men, but that did 
not trouble King Charles. It is easy to pay debts 
in other people's property. All Penn was asked 
to pay the king was two beaver skins every year 
and one-fifth of all the gold and silver that should 
be mined. As no gold or silver was ever mined 
the king got nothing but his beaver skins, which 
were a kind of rent. 

What do any of my young readers know about 
the Delaware River? Have any of you seen the 
wide, swift stream which flows between the states 
of Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and runs into 
the broad body of water known as Delaware Bay? 
On its banks stands the great city of Philadelphia, 
in which live more than a million people, and 
where there are thousands of busy workshops and 
well-filled stores. This large and fine city came 
from the way the king paid his debt. King 
Charles was not a good man, but he did one thing 
that had a good ending. 

There were white men there before the Quakers 
came. Many years earlier a number of people 
from Sweden had come and settled along the river. 
Then the Dutch from New York said the land was 
theirs, and took possession of the forts of the 
Swedes. Then the English of New York claimed 
the land as theirs. Then Quakers came and set- 



THE DUTCH AND THE QUAKERS 57 

tied in New Jersey. Finally came William Penn, 
in a ship called by the pretty name of the " Wel- 
come," and after that the land was governed by 
the Quakers or Friends, though the Swedes stayed 
there still. 

We have something very pleasant to say about 
good William Penn. He knew very well that King 
Charles did not own the land, and had no right 
to sell it or give it away. So he called the Indians 
together under a great elm tree on the river bank, 
and had a long talk with them, and told them he 
would pay them for all the land he wanted. This 
pleased the red men very much, and ever after- 
wards they loved William Penn. 

Do you not think it must have been a pretty 
scene when Penn and the Quakers met the Indian 
chiefs under the great tree — the Indians in their 
colored blankets and the Quakers in their great 
hats? That tree stood for more than a hundred 
years afterwards, and when the British army was 
in Philadelphia during the war of the Revolution 
their general put a guard around Penn's treaty 
tree, so that the soldiers should not cut It down 
for firewood. The tree is gone now, but a stone 
monument marks where It stood. A city was laid 
out on the river, which Penn named Philadelphia, 
a word which means Brotherly Love. I suppose 
some brotherly love Is there still, but not nearly 
so much as there should be. 



58 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

Streets were made through the woods, and the 
names of the trees were given to these streets, 
which are still known as Chestnut, Walnut, Pine, 
Cherry, and the like. People soon came in num- 
bers, and it is wonderful how fast the city grew. 
Soon there were hundreds of comfortable houses, 
and in timiC it grew to be the largest in the country. 

The Indians looked on in wonder to see large 
houses springing up where they had hunted deer, 
and to see great ships where they had paddled 
their canoes. But the white men spread more and 
more Into the land, and the red men were pushed 
back, and in time none of them were left In Penn's 
woodland colony. This was long after William 
Penn was dead. 

But while Penn^s city was growing large and 
rich, he was becoming poor. He spent much 
money on his province and got very little back. 
At last he became so poor that he was put In 
prison for debt, as was the custom In those days. 
In the end he died and left the province to his 
sons. The Indians sent some beautiful furs to his 
widow In memory of their great and good brother. 
They said these were to make her a cloak " to 
protect her while she was passing without her 
guide through the stormy wilderness of life." 



CHAPTER V 

THE CAVALIER COLONIES OF THE SOUTH 

VIRGINIA has often been called the Cava- 
lier colony. Do any of you know why, 
or who the Cavaliers were? Perhaps I 
had better tell you. They were the lords and the 
proud people of England. Many of them had no 
money, but they would do no work, and cared for 
nothing but pleasure and fighting. There were 
plenty of working people In that country, but there 
were many who were too proud to work, and ex- 
pected others to work for them, while they hoped 
to live at ease. 

Some of this kind of men came out with John 
Smith, and that Is why he had so much trouble 
with them. The Puritans and the Quakers came 
from the working people of England, and nobody 
had to starve them to make them work, or to 
pour cold water down their sleeves to stop them 
from swearing. 

While religious people settled In the North, 
many of the proud Cavalier class, who cared very 
little about religion, came to the South. So we 
may call the southern settlements the Cavalier colo- 

59 



6o THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

nies, though many of the common people came 
there too, and it was not long before there was 
plenty of work. 

The first to come after John Smith and the 
Jamestown people were some shiploads of Catho- 
lics. You should know that the Catholics were 
treated in England even worse than the Puritans 
and the Quakers. The law said they must go to 
the English Church Instead of to their own. If 
they did not they would have to pay a large sum 
of money or go to prison. Was not this very 
harsh and unjust? 

The Catholics were not all poor people. There 
were rich men and nobles among them. One of 
these nobles, named Lord Baltimore, asked the 
King for some land in America where he and his 
friends might dwell in peace and have churches of 
their own. This was many years before William 
Penn asked for the same thing. The King was a 
friend of Lord Baltimore and told him he might 
have as much land as he could make use of. So 
he chose a large tract just north of Virginia, 
which the King named Maryland, after his wife. 
Queen Mary, who was a Catholic. All Lord 
Baltimore had to pay for this was two Indian ar- 
rows every year, and a part of the gold and silver, 
if any were found. This was done to show that 
the King still, kept some claim to Maryland, and 
did not give away all his rights. 



THE CAVALIER COLONIES 6i 

And now comes a story much the same as I 
have told you several times already. A shipload 
of Catholics and other people came across the 
ocean to the new continent which Columbus had 
discovered many years before. These sailed up 
the broad Chesapeake Bay. You may easily find 
this bay on your maps. They landed at a place 
they called St. Mary's, where there was a small 
Indian town. As It happened, the Indians at this 
town had been so much troubled by fighting tribes 
farther north that they were just going to move 
somewhere else. So they were very glad to sell 
their town to the white strangers. 

All they wanted for their houses and their corn 
fields wxre some hatchets, knives and beads, and 
other things they could use. Gold and silver 
would have been of no value to them, for they had 
never seen these metals. The only money the In- 
dians used was round pieces of seashell, with holes 
bored through them. Before these people left 
their town they showed the white men how to hunt 
in the woods and how to plant corn. And their 
wives taught the white women how to make 
hominy out of corn and how to bake johnny-cakes. 
So the people of Maryland did not suffer from 
hunger like those of Virginia and New England, 
and they had plenty to eat and lived very well from 
the start. 

This was In the year 1634, just about the time 



62 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

Roger Williams went to Rhode Island. Lord 
Baltimore did the same thing that Roger Williams 
did; he gave the people religious liberty. Every 
Christian who came to Maryland had the right to 
worship God in his own way. Roger Williams 
went farther than this, for he gave the same right 
to Jews and all other people, whether they were 
Christians or pagans. 

It was not long before other people came to 
Maryland, and they began to plant tobacco, as the 
people were doing In Virginia. Tobacco was a 
good crop to raise, for it could be sold for a high 
price in England, so that the Maryland planters 
did yery well, and many of them grew rich. But 
religious liberty did not last there very long, and 
the Catholics were not much better off than they 
had been in England. All the poor people who 
came with Lord Baltimore were Protestants. 
Only the rich ones were Catholics. Many other 
Protestants soon came, some of them being Puri- 
tans from New England, who did not know what 
religious liberty meant. 

These people said that the Catholics should not 
have the right to worship In their own churches, 
even In Maryland, and they went so far that they 
tried to take from Lord Baltimore the lands which 
, the king had given him. There was much fight- 
ing between the Catholics and the Protestants. 
Now one pa^y got the best of it, and now the 



THE CAVALIER COLONIES 63 

other. In the end the provuice was taken from 
Lord Baltimore's son; and when a new king, 
named King Wilham, came to the throne, he said 
that Maryland was his property, and that the 
Catholics should not have a church of their own 
or worship in their own way in that province. Do 
you not think this was very cruel and unjust? It 
seems so to me. It did not seem right, after Lord 
Baltimore had given religious liberty to all men, 
for others to come and take it away. But the 
custom in those days was that all men must be 
made to think the same way, or be punished if 
they didn't. This seems queer now-a-days, when 
every man has the right to think as he pleases. 

In time there was born a Lord Baltimore who 
became a Protestant, and the province was given 
back to him. It grew rich and full of people, 
and large towns were built. One of these was 
named Baltimore, after Lord Baltimore, and is 
now a great city. And Washington, the capital 
of the United States, stands on land that was once 
part of Maryland. But St. Mary's, the first town 
built, has gone, and there is hardly a mark left to 
show where it stood. 

Maryland, as I have said, lies north of Virginia. 
The Potomac River runs between them. South 
of Virginia was another great tract of land, reach- 
ing all the way to Florida, which the Spaniards 
then held. Some French Protestants tried to set- 



64 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

tie there, but they were cruelly murdered by the 
Spaniards, and no one else came there for many 
years. 

About 1660 people began to settle In what was 
then called " the Carolinas," but Is now called 
North Carolina and South Carolina. Some of 
these came from Virginia and some from England, 
and small settlements were made here and there 
along the coast. One of these was called Charles- 
ton. This has now grown Into a large and Im- 
portant city. 

There were some noblemen In England who 
thought that this region might become worth much 
money, so they asked the king, Charles II., to 
give it to them. This was the same king who 
gave the Dutch settlement to the Duke of York 
and who afterwards gave Pennsylvania to William 
Penn. He was very ready to give away what did 
not belong to him, and told these noblemen that 
they were welcome to the Carolinas. There were 
eight of these men, and they made up their minds 
that they would have a very nice form of govern- 
ment for their new province. So they went to a 
famous man named John Locke, who was believed 
to be very wise, and asked him to draw up a 
form of government for them. 

John Locke drew up a plan of government 
which they thought very fine, but which everybody 
now thinks was very foolish and absurd. I fancy 



THE CAVALIER COLONIES 65 

he knew more about books than he did about gov- 
ernment. He called it the " Grand Model," and 
the noble lords thought they had a wonderful gov- 
ernment indeed. There were to be earls, and 
barons, and lords, the same as in Europe. No one 
could vote who did not hold fifty acres. The 
poorer people were to be like so many slaves. 
They could not even leave one plantation for an- 
other without asking leave from the lord or baron 
who owned it. 

What do you think the people did? You must 
not imagine they came across the ocean to be made 
slaves of. No, indeed ! They cared no more for 
the " Grand Model " than if it was a piece of tis- 
sue paper. They settled where they pleased, and 
would not work for the earls and barons, and 
fought with the governors, and refused to pay the 
heavy taxes which the eight noble owners asked. 

In time these noblemen got so sick of the whole 
business that they gave their province back to the 
king. It was then divided into two colonies, 
known as North Carolina and South Carolina. 
As for the lords and barons, nobody heard of them 
any more. 

The people of the Carolinas had other things 
beside the Grand Model of government to trouble 
them. There were savage Indians back in the 
country who attacked them and killed many of 
them. And there were pirates along the coast 



66 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

who attacked ships and killed all on board. But 
rice and indigo were planted, and afterwards cot- 
ton, and much tar and turpentine were got from 
the pine trees In North Carolina, and as the years 
went on these colonies became rich and prosperous, 
and the people began to have a happy time. 

I hope none of my young readers are tired of 
reading about kings and colonies. I am sure they 
must have enjoyed reading about John Smith and 
Miles Standish and William Penn and the rest of 
the great leaders. At any rate, there is only one 
more colony to talk about, and then we will be 
through with this part of our story. This is the 
colony of Georgia, which lies in the tract of land 
between South Carolina and Florida. 

I am sure that when you are done reading this 
book you will be glad that you did not live two 
or three hundred years ago. To-day every one 
can think as he pleases, and do as he pleases, too, 
if he does not break the laws. And the laws are 
much more just and less cruel than they were in 
former times. Why, in those days, every man 
who owed money and could not pay it might be 
put in prison and kept there for years. He could 
not work there and earn money to pay his debts, 
and if his friends did not pay them he might stay 
there till he died. As I have told you, even the 
good William Penn was put In prison for debt, 
and kept there till his friends paid the money. 



THE CAVALIER COLONIES 67 

There were as many poor debtors In prison as 
there were thieves and villains. Some of them be- 
come sick and died, and some were starved to 
death by cruel jailers, who would not give them 
anything to eat if they had no money to pay for 
food. One great and good man, named General 
James Oglethorpe, visited the prisons, and was so 
sorry for the poor debtors he saw there, that he 
asked the king to give him a piece of land in 
America where he could take some of these suffer- 
ing people. 

There was now not much land left to give. 
Settlements had been made all along the coast ex- 
cept south of the Carollnas, and the king told Gen- 
eral Oglethorpe that he could have the land which 
lay there, and could take as many debtors out of 
prison as he chose. He thought It would be a 
good thing to take them somewhere where they 
could work and earn their living. The king who 
was then on the throne was named King George, 
so Oglethorpe called his new colony Georgia. 

It was now the year 1733, a hundred years after 
Lord Baltimore had come to Maryland. General 
Oglethorpe took many of the debtors out of prison, 
and very glad they were to get out, you may be 
sure. He landed with them on the banks of a 
line river away down South, where he laid out a 
town which he named Savannah. 

The happy debtors now found themselves in a 



68 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

broad and beautiful land, where they could prove 
whether they were ready to work or not. They 
were not long In doing this. Right away they be- 
gan to cut down trees, and build houses, and plant 
fields, and very soon a pretty town was to be seen 
and food plants were growing In the fields. And 
very happy men and women these poor people 
were. 

General Oglethorpe knew as well as William 
Penn that the land did not belong to the king. 
He sent for the Indian chiefs and told them the 
land was theirs, and offered to pay them for it. 
They were quite willing to sell, and soon he had 
all the land he wanted, and what Is more, he had 
the Indians for friends. 

But If he had no trouble with the Indians, he 
had a good deal with the Spaniards of Florida. 
They said that Georgia was a part of Florida and 
that the Enghsh had no right there. And they 
sent an army and tried to drive them out. 

I fancy they did not know that Oglethorpe was 
an old soldier, but he soon showed them that he 
knew how to fight. He drove back their armies 
and took their ships; and they quickly made up 
their minds that they had better let the English 
alone. There was plenty of land for both, for the 
Spaniards had only one town in Florida. This 
was St. Augustine. 

Before long some Germans came from Europe 



THE CAVALIER COLONIES 69 

and settled in the new colony. People came also 
from other parts of Europe. Corn was planted 
for food, and some of the colonists raised silk- 
worms and made silk. But In the end, cotton 
came to be the chief crop of the colony. 

General Oglethorpe lived to be a very old man. 
He did not die till long after the American Revo- 
lution. Georgia was then a flourishing state, and 
the little town he had started on the banks of the 
Savannah River was a fine city, with broad streets, 
fine mansions, and beautiful shade trees. I think 
the old general must have been very proud of this 
charming city, and of the great state which owed 
Its start to him. 



CHAPTER VI 



WERE TREATED 



NOW that you have been told about the set- 
tlement of the colonies, It is well to recall 
how many of them there were. Let us 
see. There were the Pilgrim and Puritan settle- 
ments of New England, Roger Williams's settle- 
ment in Rhode Island, the Dutch settlement in 
New York, the Quaker one in Pennsylvania, the 
Catholic settlement in Maryland, the Cavalier ones 
in Virginia and the Carolinas, and the Debtor set- 
tlement in Georgia. Then there were some 
smaller ones, making about a dozen in all. 

These stretched all along the coast, from Can- 
ada, the French country in the north, to Florida, 
the Spanish country in the south. The British 
were a long time in settling these places, for nearly 
250 years passed after the time of Columbus be- 
fore General Oglethorpe came to Georgia. 

While all this was going on, what was becoming 
of the native people of the country, the Indians? 
I am afraid they were having a very hard time of 
it. The Spaniards made slaves of them, and 

70 



THE RED MEN 71 

forced them to work so terribly hard In the mines 
and the fields that they died by thousands. The 
French and the English fought with them and 
drove them away from their old homes, killing 
many of them. 

And this has gone on and on ever since, until the 
red men, who once spread over all this country, 
are now kept in a very- small part of it. Some 
people say there are as many of them as there ever 
were. If that is so, they can live on much less 
land than they once occupied. 

What do you know about these Indians? Have 
you ever seen one of them? Your fathers or 
grandfathers have, I am sure, for once they were 
everywhere in this country, and people saw more 
of them than they liked ; but now we see them only 
in the Wild West shows or the Indian schools, ex- 
cept we happen to go where they live. Do you 
not want to know something about these oldest 
Americans? I have been busy so far talking about 
the white men and what they did, and have had 
no chance to tell you about the people they found 
on this continent and how they treated them. I 
think I must make this chapter an Indian one. 

Well, then, when the Spanish came to the south, 
and the French to the north, and the Dutch and the 
Swedes and the British to the middle country, they 
found everywhere a kind of people they had never 
seen before. Their skin was not white, like that 



72 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

of the people of Europe, nor black like that of the 
Africans, but of a reddish color, like that of cop- 
per, so that they called them red men. They had 
black eyes and hair, and high cheek-bones, and 
were not handsome according to our Ideas; but 
they were tall and strong, and many of them very 
proud and dignified. 

These people lived in a very wild fashion. 
They spent much of their time in hunting, fishing, 
and fighting. They raised some Indian corn and 
beans, and were fond of tobacco, but most of their 
food was got from wild animals killed in the 
woods. They were as fond of fighting as they 
were of hunting. They were divided into tribes, 
some of which were nearly always at war with 
other tribes. They had no weapons but stone 
hatchets and bows and arrows, but they were able 
with these to kill many of their enemies. People 
say that they were badly treated by the whites, but 
they treated one another worse than the whites 
ever did. 

The Indians were very cruel. The warriors 
shaved off all their hair except one lock, which was 
called the scalp lock. When one of them was 
killed In battle this lock was used to pull off his 
scalp, or the skin of his head. They were very 
proud of these scalps, for they showed how many 
men they had killed. 

When they took a prisoner, they would tie him 



THE RED MEN 73 

to a tree and build a fire round him and burn him 
to death. And while he was burning they would 
torture him all they could. We cannot feel so 
much pity for the Indians when we think of all 
this. No doubt the white men have treated them 
very unjustly, but they have stopped all these ter- 
rible cruelties, and that Is something to be thank- 
ful for. In this country, where once there was 
constant war and bloodshed, and torturing and 
burning of prisoners, now there Is peace and kind- 
ness and happiness. So If evil has been done, good 
has come of It. 

At the time I am speaking of, forests covered 
much of this great continent. They spread every- 
where, and the Indians lived under their shade, 
and had wonderful skill In following animals or 
enemies through their shady depths. They read 
the ground much as we read the pages of a book. 
A broken twig, a bit of torn moss, a footprint 
which we could not see, were full of meaning to 
them, and they would follow a trail for miles 
through the woods where we would not have been 
able to follow It a yard. Their eyes were trained 
to this kind of work, but In time some of the 
white men became as expert as the Indians, and 
could follow a trail as well. 

The red men lived mostly In little huts covered 
with skins or bark, which they called wigwams. 
Some of the tribes lived In villages, where there 



74 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

were large bark houses. But they did not stay 
much in their houses, for they liked better to be 
in the open air. Now they were hunting deer in 
the woods, now fishing or paddling their bark 
canoes in the streams, now smoking their pipes in 
front of their huts, now dancing their war dances 
or getting ready to fight. 

The men did nothing except hunting and fight- 
ing. The women had to do all other work, such 
as cooking, planting and gathering corn, building 
wigwams, and the like. They did some weaving 
of cloth, but most of their clothes were made of 
the skins of wild animals. 

In war times the warriors tried to make them- 
selves as ugly as they could, painting their faces 
in a horrid fashion and sticking feathers in their 
hair. They seemed to think they could scare their 
enemies by ugly faces. 

I have spoken of the tribes of the Indians. 
Some of these tribes were quite large, and were 
made up of a great number of men and women 
who lived together and spoke the same language. 
Each tribe was divided up into clans, or small fam- 
ily-like groups, and each clan had its sachem, or 
peace-chief. There were war-chiefs, also, who led 
them to battle. The sachems and chiefs gov- 
erned the tribes and made such laws as they had. 

Every clan had some animal which it called its 
totem, such as the wolf, bear, or fox. They were 



THE RED MEN 75 

proud of their totems, and the form of the animal 
was tattooed on their breast; that is, it was picked 
into the skin with needles. All the Indians were 
fond of dancing, and their war dances were as 
fierce and wild as they could make them. 

The tribes in the south were not as savage as 
those in the north. They did more farming, and 
had large and well-built villages. Some of them 
had temples and priests, and looked upon the sun 
as a god. They kept a fire always burning in the 
temple, and seemed to think this fire was a part of 
their sun-god. They had a great chief who ruled 
over the tribe, and also a head war-chief, a high- 
priest, and other rulers. 

In the far west were Indians who built houses 
that were almost like towns, for they had hundreds 
of rooms. A whole tribe could live in one of these 
great houses, sometimes as many as three thousand 
people. Other tribes lived in holes in the sides of 
steep rocks, where their enemies could not easily 
get at them. These are called Cliff-dwellers. 
And there were some who lived on top of high, 
steep hills, which were very hard to climb. These 
Indians raised large crops of corn and other plants. 

Do you think, if you had been an Indian, you 
would have liked to see white people coming In 
ships across the waters and settling down in your 
country as if they owned It? They did not all 
pay for the land they took, like William Penn and 



76 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

General Oglethorpe. The most of them acted as 
If the country belonged to them, and It Is no won- 
der the old owners of the country did not like It, 
or that there was fierce fighting between the white 
and the red men. 

Do you remember the story of Canonlcus and 
the snake skin, and that of Miles Standish and the 
chiefs? There was not much fighting then, but 
there was some soon after in Connecticut, whither 
a number of settlers had come from Boston and 
others from England. Here there was a warlike 
tribe called the Pequots, who became very angry 
on seeing the white men in their country. 

They began to kill the whites whenever they 
found them alone. Then the whites began to 
kill the Indians. Soon there was a deadly war. 
The Pequots had made a fort of trunks of trees, 
set close together In the ground. They thought 
they were safe In this fort, but the English made 
an attack on It, and got Into It, and set fire to the 
Indian wigwams Inside. The fight went on ter- 
ribly in the smoke and flame until nearly all the 
Pequots were killed. Only two white men lost 
their lives. This so scared the Indians that It was 
forty years before there was another Indian war 
in New England. 

I have told you about the good chief Massasoit, 
who was so kind to Roger Williams. He was a 
friend to the white men as long as he lived, but 



THE RED MEN 77 

after his death his son Philip became one of their 
greatest enemies. 

Philip's brother was taken sick and died after 
he had been to Plymouth, and the Indians thought 
that the people there had given him poison. 
Philip said that they would try to kill him next, 
and he made up his mind to fight them and drive 
them out of the country. The Indians had guns 
now, and knew how to use them, and they began 
to shoot the white people as they went quietly along 
the roads. 

Next they began to attack the villages of the 
whites. They would creep up at night, set the 
houses on fire, and shoot the men as they came out. 
The war went on for a long time in this way, and 
there were many terrible fights. 

At one place the people, when they saw the 
Indians coming, all ran to a strong building called 
a blockhouse. The Indians came whooping and 
yelling around this, and tried to set it on fire by 
shooting arrows with blazing rags on their points. 
Once the roof caught fire, but some of the men ran 
up and threw water on the flames. 

Then the Indians got a cart and filled It with 
hay. Setting this on fire, they pushed it up against 
the house. It looked as If all the white men and 
women and children would be burned alive. The 
house caught fire and began to blaze. But just 
then came a shower of rain that put out the fire, 



78 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

and the people Inside were saved once more. Be- 
fore the Indians could do anything further some 
white soldiers came and the savages all ran into 
the woods. 

There were other wonderful escapes, but many 
of the settlers were killed, and Philip began to 
think he would be able to drive them out of the 
country, as he wished to do. He was called King 
Philip, though he had no crown except a string of 
wampum, — or bits of bored shell strung together 
and twined round his head, — and no palace bet- 
ter than a bark hut, while his finest dress was a red 
blanket. It took very little to make an Indian 
king. The white men knew more about war than 
the Indians, and in the end they began to drive 
them back. One of their forts was taken, and the 
wigwams in it were set on fire, like those of the 
Pequots. A great many of the poor red men 
perished in the flames. 

The best fighter among the white men was Cap- 
tain Church. He followed King Philip and his 
men to one hiding place after another, killing 
some and taking others prisoners. Among the 
prisoners were the wife and little son of the 
Indian king. 

" It breaks my heart," said Philip, when he 
heard of this. " Now I am ready to die." 

He did not live much longer. Captain Church 
chased him from place to place, till he came to 



THE RED MEN 79 

Mount Hope, in Rhode Island, where Massasolt 
lived when Roger Williams came to him through 
the woods. Here King Philip was shot, and the 
war ended. It had lasted more than a year, and 
a large number had been killed on both sides. It 
is known in history as King Philip's War. 

There were wars with the Indians in many other 
parts of the country. In Virginia the Indians 
made a plot to kill all the white people. They 
pretended to be very friendly, and brought them 
meat and fish to sell. While they were talking 
quietly the savages drew their tomahawks or 
hatchets and began to kill the whites. In that one 
morning nearly three hundred and fifty were killed, 
men, women, and little children. 

Hardly any of the settlers were left alive, ex- 
cept those in Jamestown, who were warned in 
time. They now attacked the Indians, shooting 
down all they could find, and killing a great many 
of them. 

This was after the death of Powhatan, who had 
been a friend to the whites. About twenty years 
later, in 1644, another Indian massacre took place. 
After this the Indians were driven far back into 
the country, and did not give any more trouble for 
thirty years. The last war with them broke out 
In 1675. 

The Dutch in New York also had their troubles 
with the Indians. They paid for all the lands 



8o THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

they took, but one of their governors was foolish 
enough to start a war that went on for two years. 
A worse trouble was that In North Carolina, where 
there was a powerful tribe called the Tuscaroras. 
These attacked the settlers and murdered numbers 
of them. But In the end they were driven out of 
the country. 

The only colonies in which the Indians kept 
friendly for a long time were Pennsylvania and 
Georgia. We know the reason of this. William 
Penn and General Oglethorpe were wise enough 
to make friends with them at the start, and con- 
tinued to treat them with justice and friendliness, 
so that the red men came to love these good men. 



CHAPTER VII 

ROYAL GOVERNORS AND LOYAL CAPTAINS 

DO any of my young readers know what Is 
meant by a Charter? "Yes," I hear 
some of you say. " No," say others. 
Well, I must speak to the '' No," party; the party 
that doesn't know, and wants to know. 

A charter Is a something written or printed which 
grants certain rights or privileges to the party to 
whom It Is given. It may come from a king or a 
congress, or from any person In power, and be 
given to any other person who wishes the right to 
hold a certain property or to do some special thing. 
Do you understand any better now? I am 
sorry I can not put It In plainer words. I think 
the best way will be to tell you about some char- 
ters which belong to American history. You 
should know that all the people who crossed the 
ocean to make new settlements on the Atlantic 
Coast had charters from the king of England. 
This was the case with the Pilgrims and the Purl- 
tans, with Roger Williams, William Penn, Lord 
Baltimore, and the others I have spoken about. 
These charters were written on parchment, 
8i 



82 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

which Is the skin of an animal, made Into some- 
thing like paper. The charters gave these people 
the right to settle on and own certain lands, to 
form certain kinds of government, and to do a 
variety of things which In England no one could 
do but the king and the parliament. 

The colonies In New England were given the 
right to choose their own governors and make 
their own laws, and nobody, not even the king, 
could stop them from doing this. The king had 
given them this right, and no other king could take 
It away while they kept their charters. 

Would you care to be told what took place after- 
wards? All kings, you should know, are not alike. 
Some are very mild and easy, and some are very 
harsh and severe. Some are willing for the peo- 
ple to have liberty, and some are not. The kings 
who gave the charters to New England were of the 
easy kind. But they were followed by kings of 
the hard kind, who thought that these people be- 
yond the sea had too much liberty, and who wished 
to take away some of It. 

Charles II., who gave some of these charters, 
was one of the easy kings, and did not trouble 
himself about the people in the colonies. James 
II., who came after him, was one of the hard 
kings. He was somewhat of a tyrant, and wanted 
to make the laws himself, and to take the 
right to do this from the people. After trying to 



ROYAL GOVERNORS 83 

rob the people of England of their liberties, he 
thought he would do the same thing with the peo- 
ple of America. " Those folks across the seas 
are having too good a time," he thought. " They 
have too many rights and privileges, and I must 
take some of them away. I will let them know 
that I am their master." 

But they had their charters, which gave them 
these rights; so the wicked king thought the first 
thing for him to do was to take their charters 
away from them. Then their rights would be 
gone, and he could make for them a new set of 
laws, and force them to do everything he wished. 

What King James did was to send a nobleman 
named Sir Edmund Andros to New England to 
rule as royal governor. He was the agent of the 
king, and was to do all that the king ordered. 
He began by undertaking to rob the people of 
their charters. You see, even a tyrant king did 
not like to go against the charters, for a charter 
was a sacred pledge. 

Well, the new governor went about ordering 
the people to give him their charters. One of the 
places to which he went was Hartford, Connecti- 
cut, and there he told the officers of the colony that 
they must deliver up their charter; the king had 
said so, and the king's word must be obeyed. 

If any of you had lived in Connecticut in those 
days I know how you would have felt. The char- 



84 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

ter gave the people a great deal of liberty, and 
they did not wish to part with It. I know that 
you and I would have felt the same way. But 
what could they do? If they did not give It up 
peacefully, Governor Andros might come again 
with soldiers and take It from them by force. So 
the lawmakers and officials were In a great fret 
about what they should do. 

They asked Governor Andros to come to the 
State-house and talk over the matter. Some of 
them fancied they could get him to leave them 
their charter, though they might have known bet- 
ter. There they sat — the governor In the lofty 
chair of state, the others seated In a half circle 
before him. There was a broad table between 
them, and on this lay the great parchment of the 
charter. Some of those present did a great deal 
of talking. They told how good King Charles 
had given them the charter, and how happy they 
had been under It, and how loyal they were to 
good King James, and they begged Governor An- 
dros not to take It fromx them. But they might 
as well have talked to the walls. He had his 
orders from the king and was one of the men who 
do just what they are told. 

While the talk was going on a strange thing 
happened. It was night, and the room was lit up 
with a few tallow candles. Of course you know 
that these were the best lights people had at that 



ROYAL GOVERNORS 85 

time; gas or the electric light had never been heard 
of. And it was before the time of matches. The 
only way to make a light in those days was by the 
use of the flint and steel, which was a very slow 
method indeed. 

Suddenly, while one of the Hartford men was 
talking and the governor was looking at him in a 
tired sort of way, all the lights in the room went 
out, and the room was In deep darkness. Every- 
body jumped up from their chairs and there was 
no end of bustle and confusion, and likely enough 
some pretty hard words were said. They had to 
hunt In the dark for the flint and steel; and then 
there came snapping of steel on flint, and falling 
of sparks on tinder, so that it was some time be- 
fore the candles were lit again. 

When this was done the governor opened his 
eyes very wide, for the table was empty, the char- 
ter was gone. I fancy he swore a good deal when 
he saw that. In those days even the highest peo- 
ple were given to swearing. But no matter how 
much he swore, he could not with hard words 
bring back the charter. It was gone, and nobody 
knew where. Everybody looked for It, right and 
left, in and out, In drawers and closets, but It was 
nowhere to be found. Very likely the most of 
them did not want to find it. At any rate, the gov- 
ernor had to go away without the charter, and 
years passed before anybody saw it again. 



S6 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

Do you not wish to know what became of It? 
We are told that It had been taken by a bold young 
soldier named Captain Wadsworth. While all 
the people in the room were looking at the one 
who was making his speech, the captain quickly 
took off his cloak and gave It a quick fling over the 
candles, so that In a moment they were all put out. 
Then he snatched up the charter from the table 
and slipped quietly out of the room. While they 
were busy snapping the flint and steel, he was hur- 
rying down the street towards a great oak tree 
which was more than a hundred years old. This 
tree was hollow In Its heart, and there was a hole 
in Its side which opened Into the hollow. Into 
this hole Captain Wadsworth pushed the charter, 
and it fell Into the hollow space. I do not think 
any of us would have thought of looking there for 
it. I know nobody did at that time, and there it 
lay for years, untlF the tyrant King James was 
driven from the throne and a new king had taken 
his place. Then it was joyfully brought out, and 
the people were ever so glad to see It again. 

The old tree stood for many years in the main 
street of the town, and became famous as the Char- 
ter Oak. The people loved and were proud of it 
as long as It stood. But many years ago the hoary 
old oak fell, and now only some of Its wood Is 
left. This has been made Into chairs and boxes 
and other objects which are thought of great value. 



ROYAL GOVERNORS 87 

Do you not think that Captain Wadsworth was 
a bold and daring man, and one who knew just 
what to do in times of trouble? If you do not, I 
fancy you will when I have told you another story 
about him. 

This took place after the charter had been taken 
from the oak and brought to the statehouse again. 
At this time there was a governor in New York 
named Fletcher, who claimed that the king had 
given him the right to command the militia, or 
citizen soldiers, of Connecticut. So he came to 
Hartford, where Captain Wadsworth was In com- 
mand, and where the people did not want any 
stranger to have power over them. He told the 
captain what he had come for, and that he had a 
commission to read to the soldiers. 

The militia were called out and drawn up In 
line in the public square of the town, and Governor 
Fletcher came before them, full of his importance. 
He took out of his pocket the paper which he said 
gave him the right to command, and began to read 
It in a very proud and haughty manner. But he 
had not read ten words when Captain Wadsworth 
told the drummers to beat their drums, and before 
you could draw your breath there was such a rattle 
and roll of noise that not a word could be heard. 

*' Silence ! " cried Fletcher. *' Stop those 
drums! " The drums stopped, and he began to 
read again. 



88 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

" Drum! " ordered Wadsworth In a loud tone, 
and such a noise began that a giant's voice would 
have been drowned. 

*' Silence ! " again shouted Fletcher. He was 
very red In the face by this time. 

*' Drum, I say ! " roared the captain. 

Then he turned to the governor and said, laying 
his hand on his sword, " I command these men. 
Governor Fletcher, and If you interrupt me again 
I will make the sun shine through you In a minute." 
And he looked as If he meant what he said. All 
the governor's pomp and consequence were gone, 
and his face turned from red to pale. He hastily 
thrust the paper back into his pocket, and was not 
long In leaving Hartford for New York. No 
doubt he thought that Connecticut was not a good 
place for royal governors. 

Suppose I now tell you the story of another royal 
governor and another bold captain. This was 
down In Virginia, but It was long after Captain 
Smith was dead and after Virginia had become a 
large and prosperous colony. 

The king sent there a governor named Berkeley, 
who acted as If he was master and all the people 
were his slaves. They did not like to be treated 
this way; but Berkeley had soldiers under his com- 
mand, and they were forced to obey. While this 
was going on the Indians began to murder the set- 
tlers. The governor ought to have stopped them. 



ROYAL GOVERNORS 89 

but he was afraid to call out the people, and he let 
the murders go on. 

There was a young man named Nathaniel 
Bacon who asked Governor Berkeley to let him 
raise some men to fight the Indians. The gov- 
ernor refused. But this did not stop brave young 
Bacon, for he called out a force of men and drove 
off the murdering savages. 

Governor Berkeley was very angry at this. He 
said that Bacon was a traitor and ought to be 
treated like one, and that the men with him were 
rebels. Bacon at once marched with his men 
against Jamestown, and the haughty governor ran 
away as fast as he could. 

But while Bacon and his men were fighting the 
Indians again, Governor Berkeley came back and 
talked more than ever about rebels and traitors. 
This made Bacon and the people with him very 
angry. To be treated In this way while they were 
saving the people from the Indian knife and toma- 
hawk was too bad. They marched against James- 
town again. This time the governor did not run 
away, but prepared to defend the place with 
soldiers and cannon. 

But they did not fire their guns. Bacon had 
captured some of the wives of the principal men, 
and he put them in front of his line as he advanced. 
The governor did not dare bid his soldiers to fire 
on these women, so he left the town again In a 



90 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

hurry, and it was taken by the Indian fighters. 

Bacon made up his mind that Governor Berke- 
ley should not come back to Jamestown again. 
He had the town set on fire and burned to the 
ground. Some of the men with him set fire to 
their own houses, so that they should not give 
shelter to the governor and his men. That was 
the end of Jamestown. It was never rebuilt. 
Only ashes remained of the first EngHsh town in 
America. To-day there Is only an old church 
tower to show where it stood. 

We cannot tell what might have happened if 
brave young Bacon had lived. As it was, he was 
taken sick and died. His men now had no leader, 
and soon scattered. Then the governor came back 
full of fury, and began to hang all those who op- 
posed him. He might have put a great many of 
them to death if the king had not stopped him and 
ordered him back to England. This was King 
Charles II., whose father had been put to death 
by Cromwell. He was angry at what Governor 
Berkeley had done, and said: 

" That old fool has hung more men In that 
naked land than I did for the murder of my 
father." 



CHAPTER VIII 

OLD TIMES IN THE COLONIES 

WHAT a wonderful change has come over 
this great country of ours since the days 
of our grandfathers! Look at our 
great cities, with their grand buildings, and their 
miles of streets, with swift-speeding electric cars, 
and thousands of carriages and wagons, and great 
stores lit by brilliant electric lights, and huge work- 
shops filled with rattling wheels and marvelous 
machines ! And look at our broad fields filled 
with cattle or covered by growing crops, and 
divided by splendid highways and railroads thou- 
sands of miles In length ! Is it not all very won- 
derful? 

" But has It not always been this way? " some 
very young persons ask. " I have lived so many 
years and have never seen anything else." 

My dear young friend, If you had lived fifty or 
sixty years, as many of us older folks have, you 
would have seen very different things. And If we 
had lived as long ago as our grandfathers did, and 
then come back again to-day, I fancy our eyes 

91 



92 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

would open wider than Governor Andros's did 
when he saw that the charter was gone. 

In those days, as I told you, when any one 
wanted to make a light, he could not strike a 
match and touch it to a gas jet as we do, but must 
hammer away with flint and steel, and then had 
nothing better than a home-made tallow candle 
to light. Why, I am sure that many of you never 
even saw a pair of snuffers, which people then 
used to cut off the candle wick. 

Some of you who live in old houses with dusty 
lofts under the roof, full of worm-eaten old fur- 
niture, have, no doubt, found there odd-looking 
wooden frames and wheels, and queer old tools of 
various kinds. Sometimes these wheels are 
brought down stairs and set in the hall as some- 
thing to be proud of. And the old eight-day 
clocks stand there, too, with their loud " tick- 
tack," buzzing and ticking away to-day as if they 
had not done so for a hundred years. The wheels 
I speak of are the old spinning wheels, with which 
our great-grandmothers spun flax into thread. 
This thread they wove into homespun cloth on 
old-fashioned looms. All work of this kind used 
to be done at home, though now it Is done In great 
factories; and we buy our clothes in the stores, 
Instead of spinning and weaving and sewing them 
in the great old kitchens before the wood-fire on 
the hearth. 



OLD TIMES IN THE COLONIES 93 

Really, I am afraid many of you do not know 
how people lived In the old times. They are 
often spoken of as the " good old times." I fancy 
you will hardly think so when I have told you 
something more about them. Would you think 
it very good to have to get up In a freezing cold 
room, and go down and pump Ice-cold water to 
wash your face, and go out in the snow to get 
wood to make the fire, and shiver for an hour be- 
fore the house began to warm up? That Is only 
one of the things you would not find pleasant. I 
shall certainly have to stop here and tell you about 
how people lived In old times, and then you can 
say if you would like to go back to them. 

Would any boy and girl among you care to live 
in a little one-story house, made of rough logs laid 
one on another, and with a roof of thatch — that 
is, of straw or reeds, or anything that would keep 
out the rain? Houses, I mean, with only one or 
two rooms, and some of them with chimneys made 
of wood, plastered with clay on the Inside so that 
they could not be set on fire. These were the old- 
est houses. Later on people began to build larger 
houses, many of which were made of brick or 
stone. But I am afraid there was not much com- 
fort In the best of them. They had no stoves, and 
were heated by great stone fireplaces, where big 
logs of wood were burned. They made a bright 
and cheerful blaze, It Is true, but most of the heat 



94 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

went roaring up the wide chimney, and only a httle 
of it got out into the room. In the winter the peo- 
ple lived in their kitchens, with the blazing wood- 
fire for heat and light, and at bed-time went shiv- 
ering off to ice-cold rooms. Do you think you 
would have enjoyed that? 

They had very little furniture, and the most of 
what they had was rude and rough, much of It 
chopped out of the trees by the farmer's axe. 
Some of the houses had glass windows — little 
diamond-shaped panes, set In lead frames — but 
most of them had nothing but oiled paper, which 
kept out as much light as It let In. 

All the cooking was done on the great kitchen 
hearth, where the pots were hung on Iron cranes 
and the pans set on the blazing coals. They did 
not have as many kinds of food to cook as we have. 
Mush and milk, or pork and beans, were their 
usual food, and their bread was mostly made of 
rye or cornmeal. The boys and girls who had nice 
books they wanted to read often had to do so by 
the light of the kitchen fire; but I can tell you that 
books were very scarce things In those days. 

If any of us had lived then I know how glad we 
Vv^ould have been to see the bright spring time, with 
Its flowers and warm sunshine. But we might 
have shivered again when we thought of next 
winter. Of course, the people had some good 
times. They had Thanksgiving-day, when the 



OLD TIMES IN THE COLONIES 95 

table was filled with good things to eat, and elec- 
tion-day and training-day, when they had outdoor 
sports. And they had quilting and husking- 
parties, and spinning bees, and sleigh-rides and 
picnics and other amusements. A wedding was a 
happy time, and even a funeral was followed by a 
great dinner. But after all there was much more 
hard work than holiday, and nearly everybody had 
to labor long and got little for it. They were 
making themselves homes and a country, you 
know, and it was a very severe task. We, to-day, 
are getting the good of their work. 

Down South people had more comfort. The 
weather was not nearly so cold, so they did not 
have to keep up such blazing fires or shiver in their 
cold beds. Many of the rich planters built them- 
selves large mansions of wood or brick, and 
brought costly furniture from England, and lived 
in great show, with gold and silverware on their 
sideboards and fine coaches drawn by handsome 
horses when they went abroad. 

In New York the Dutch built quaint old houses, 
of the kind used in Holland. In Philadelphia the 
Quakers lived in neat two-storied houses, with 
wide orchards and gardens round them, where 
they raised plenty of fruit. When any one opened 
a shop, he would hang out a basket, a wooden 
anchor, or some such sign to show what kind of 
goods he had to sell. 



96 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

In New England Sunday was kept in a very 
strict fashion, for the people were very religious. 
It was thought wicked to play, or even to laugh, 
on Sunday, and everybody had to go to church. 
All who did not go were punished. And, mercy 
on us, what sermons they preached in those cold 
old churches, prosing away sometimes for two 
hours at a time! The boys and girls had to 
listen to them, as well as the men and women, and 
you know how hard it is now to listen for one hour. 

If they got sleepy, as no doubt they often did, 
and went off into a snooze, they were soon wide 
awake again. For the constable went up and 
down the aisles with a long staff in his hand. This 
had a rabbit's foot on one end of it and a rabbit's 
tail on the other. If he saw one of the women 
asleep he would draw the rabbit's tail over her 
face. But if a boy took a nap, down would come 
the rabbit's foot In a sharp rap on his head, and up 
he would start very wide awake. To-day we 
would call that sort of sermons cruelty to children, 
and I think it was cruelty to the old folks also. 

Do you think those were " good old times " ? 
I imagine some of you will fancy they were '' bad 
old times." But they were not nearly so bad as 
you may think. For you must bear In mind that 
the people knew nothing of many of the things we 
enjoy. They were used to hard work and plain 



OLD TIMES IN THE COLONIES 97 

food and coarse furniture and rough clothes and 
cold rooms, and were more hardy and could stand 
more than people who sleep in furnace-heated 
rooms and have their tables heaped with all kinds 
of fruits and vegetables and meats. 

But there was one thing that could not have 
been pleasant, and that was, their being afraid all 
the time of the Indians, and having to carry 
muskets with them even when they went to church. 
All around them were the forests in which the 
wild red men roamed, and their cruel yell might be 
heard at any time, or a sharp arrow might whiz 
out from the thick leaves. 

The farm-houses were built like forts, and in all 
the villages were strong buildings called block- 
houses, to which everybody could run in times of 
danger. In these the second story spread out over 
the first, and there were holes in the floor through 
which the men could fire down on the Indians be- 
low. But it makes us tremble to think that, at 
any time, the traveler or farmer might be shot 
down by a lurking savage, or might be seized and 
burned alive. We can hardly wonder that the 
people grew to hate the Indians and to kill them 
or drive them away. 

There was much game in the woods and the 
rivers were full of fish, so that many of the people 
spent their time in hunting and fishing. They got 



98 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

to be as expert In this as the Indians themselves, 
and some of them could follow a trail as well as 
the most sharp-sighted of the red men. 

Some of you may have read Fenimore Cooper's 
novels of Indian life, and know what a v/onderful 
hunter and Indian trailer old Natty Bumppo was. 
But we do not need to go to novels to read about 
great hunters, for the life of Daniel Boone is as 
full of adventure as that of any of the heroes of 
Indian life. 

Daniel Boone was the most famous hunter this 
country has ever known. He lived much later 
than the early times I am talking about, but the 
country he lived In was as wild as that found by 
the first settlers of the country. When he was 
only a little boy he went into the deep woods and 
lived there by himself for several days, shooting 
game and making a fire to cook it by. He made 
himself a little hut of boughs and sods, and lived 
in it like an Indian, and there his father and 
friends found him when they came seeking him in 
the woods. 

Years afterwards he crossed the high moun- 
tains of North Carolina and went into the great 
forest of Kentucky, where only Indians and wild 
animals lived. For a long time Jie stayed there 
by himself, with the Indians hunting and trying 
to kill him. But he was too wide awake for the 
smartest of them all. 



OLD TIMES IN THE COLONIES 99 

One time, when they were close on his trail, he 
got away from them by catching hold of a loose 
grape-vine and making a long swinging jump, and 
then running on. When the Indians came to the 
place they lost the marks of his footprints and 
gave up the chase. At another time when he was 
taken prisoner he got up, took one of their guns, 
and slipped away from them without one of them 
waking up. 

Many years afterwards, when he and others had 
built a fort in Kentucky, and brought out their 
wives and children, Boone's daughters and two 
other girls were carried off by Indians while they 
were out picking wild flowers. 

Boone and other hunters were soon on their 
trail, and followed it by the broken bushes and 
bits of torn dress which the wide-awake young 
girls had left behind them. In this way they 
came up to the Indians while they were eating 
their supper, fired on them, and then ran up and 
rescued the girls. These young folks did not go 
out of the fort to pick wild flov/ers after that. 

Once Daniel Boone was taken prisoner, and 
would have been burned alive if an old woman had 
not taken him for her son. The Indians painted 
his face and made him wear an Indian dress and 
live with them as one of themselves. But one 
day he heard them talking, and found that they 
were going to attack the fort where all his friends 



loo THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

were. Then he shpped out of the village and ran 
away. He had a long journey to make and the 
Indians followed him close. But he walked in the 
water to hide his footsteps, and lived on roots and 
berries, for fear they would hear his gun if he shot 
any game. In the end he got back safe to the 
fort. He found It In bad condition, but he set 
the men at work to make it strong, and when the 
Indians came they were beaten off. 

Daniel Boone lived to be a very old man, and 
kept going farther west to get away from the new 
people who were coming into the Kentucky forest. 
He said he wanted " elbow room." He spent all 
the rest of his life hunting, and the Indians looked 
on him as the greatest woodsman and the most 
wonderful hunter the white men ever had. 



CHAPTER IX 

A HERO OF THE COLONIES 

DO you not think there are a great many in- 
teresting stories in American history? I 
have told you some, and I could tell you 
many more. I am going to tell you one now, 
about a brave young man who had a great deal to 
do with the making of our glorious country. But 
to reach it we will have to take a step backward 
over one hundred and fifty years. That is a pretty 
long step, isn't it? It takes us away back to about 
the year 1750. But people had been coming into 
this country for more than a hundred and fifty 
years before that, and there were a great many 
white men and women in America at that time. 

These people came from Spain and France and 
Great Britain and Holland and Germany and 
Sweden and other countries besides. The Span- 
iards had spread through many regions in the 
south; the French had gone west by way of the 
Great Lakes and then down the Mississippi River; 
but the British were settled close to the ocean, and 
the country back of them was still forest land, 
where only wild men and wild beasts lived. That 

lOI 



102 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

Is the way things were situated at the time of the 
story which I now propose to tell. 

The young man I am about to speak of knew 
almost as much about life in the deep woods as 
Daniel Boone, the great hunter, of whom I have 
just told you. Why, when he was only sixteen 
years old he and another boy went far back into 
the wild country of Virginia to survey or measure 
the lands there for a rich land-holder. 

The two boys crossed the rough mountains and 
went into the broad valley of the Shenandoah 
River, and for months they lived there alone in 
the broad forest. There were no roads through 
the woods and they had to make their own paths. 
When they were hungry they would shoot a wild 
turkey or a squirrel, or sometimes a deer. They 
would cook their meat by holding it on a stick 
over a fire of fallen twigs, and for plates they 
would cut large chips from a tree with their axe. 

All day long they worked in the woods, meas- 
uring the land with a long chain. At night they 
would roll themselves In their blankets and go to 
sleep under the trees. If the weather was cold 
they gathered wood and made a fire. Very likely 
they enjoyed it all, for boys are fond of adventure. 
Sometimes a party of Indians would come up and 
be very curious to know what these white boys 
were doing. But the Indians were peaceful then, 



A HERO OF THE COLONIES 103 

and did not try to harm them. One party amused 
the young surveyors by dancing a war dance before 
them. A fine time they had in the woods, where 
they stayed alone for months. When they came 
back the land-holder was much pleased with their 
work. 

Now let us go on for five years, when the back- 
woods boy-surveyor had become a young man 
twenty-one years of age. If we could take our- 
selves back to the year 1753, and plunge into the 
woods of western Pennsylvania, we might see this 
young man again in the deep forest, walking along 
with his rifle in hand and his pack on his back. 
He had with him an old frontiersman named Gill, 
and an Indian who acted as their guide through the 
forest. 

The Indian was a treacherous fellow. One day, 
when they were not looking, he fired his gun at 
them from behind a tree. He did not hit either 
of them. Some men would have shot him, but 
they did not; they let him go away and walked on 
alone through the deep woods. They built a fire 
that night, but they did not sleep before It, for 
they were afraid the Indian might come back and 
try to kill them while they were sleeping. So they 
left it burning and walked on a few miles and went 
to sleep without a fire. 

A few days after that they came to the banks of 



104 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

a wide river. You may find it on your map of 
Pennsylvania. It is called the Allegheny River, 
and runs into the Ohio. It had been frozen, for 
it was winter time; but now the ice was broken and 
floating swiftly down the stream. 

What were they to do ? They had to get across 
that stream. The only plan they could think of 
was to build a raft out of logs and try to push it 
through the ice with long poles. This they did, 
and were soon out on the wild river and among the 
floating ice. 

It was a terrible passage. The great cakes of 
ice came swirling along and striking like heavy 
hammers against the raft, almost hard enough to 
knock it to pieces. One of these heavy ice cakes 
struck the pole of the young traveler, and gave him 
such a shock that he fell from the raft into the 
freezing cold water. He had a hard enough 
scramble to get back on the raft again. 

After a while they reached a little island in the 
stream and got ashore. There was no wood on it 
and they could not make a fire, so they had to walk 
about all night to keep from freezing. The young 
man was wet to the skin, but he had young blood 
and did not suffer as much as the older man with 
him. When morning came they found that the 
ice was frozen fast between the island and the 
other shore, so all they had to do was to walk 
across It. 



A HERO OF THE COLONIES 105 

These were not the only adventures they had, 
but they got safe back to Virginia, from which 
they had set out months before. 

Do you want to know who this young traveler 
was ? His name was George Washington. That 
is all I need say. Any one who does not know 
who George Washington was is not much of an 
American. But quite likely you do not guess 
what he was doing in the woods so far away from 
his home. He had been sent there by the gov- 
ernor of Virginia, and I shall have to tell you why. 

But first you must go back with me to an earlier 
time. The time I mean is when the French were 
settling in Canada along the St. Lawrence River, 
and going west over the lakes, and floating in 
canoes down the Mississippi River to the Gulf of 
Mexico. Wherever they went they built forts and 
claimed the country for their king. At the same 
time the English were setthng along the Atlantic 
shores and pushing slowly back into the country. 

You should know that the French and the Eng- 
lish were not the best of friends. They had their 
wars in Europe, and every time they got into war 
there they began to fight in America also. This 
made terrible times in the new country. The 
French had many of the Indians on their side, and 
they marched through the woods and attacked 
some of the English towns, and the cruel Indians 
murdered many of the poor settlers who had done 



io6 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

them no harm. There were three such wars, last- 
ing for many years, and a great many Innocent 
men, women and children, who had nothing to do 
with the wars in Europe, lost their lives. That is 
what we call war. It is bad enough now, but it 
was worse still in those days. 

The greatest of all the wars between the French 
and the English was still to come. Between the 
French forts on the Mississippi and the English 
settlements on the Atlantic there was a vast forest 
land, and both the French and the English said it 
belonged to them. In fact, it did not belong to 
either of them, but to the Indians; but the white 
men never troubled themselves about the rights of 
the old owners of the land. 

While the English were talking the French were 
acting. About 1750 they built two or three forts 
in the country south of Lake Erie. What they 
wanted was the Ohio River, with the rich and 
fertile lands which lay along that stream. Build- 
ing those forts was the first step. The next step 
would be to send soldiers to the Ohio and build 
forts there also. 

When the English heard what the French were 
doing they became greatly alarmed. If they did 
not do something very quickly they would lose all 
this great western country. The governor of Vir- 
ginia wished to know what the French meant to do, 
and he thought the best way to find out was to ask 



A HERO OF THE COLONIES 107 

them. So he chose the young backwoods surveyor, 
George Washington, and sent him through the 
great forest to the French forts. 

Washington was very young for so important 
a duty. But he was tall and strong and quick- 
witted, and he was not afraid of any man or any- 
thing. And he knew all about life in the woods. 
So he was chosen, and far west he went over plain 
and mountain, now on horseback and now on foot, 
following the Indian trails through the forest, un- 
til at last he came to the French forts. 

The French officers told him that they had come 
there to stay. They were not going to give up 
their forts to please the governor of Virginia. 
And Washington's quick eye saw that they were 
getting canoes ready to go down the streams to the 
Ohio River the next spring. This was the news 
the young messenger was taking back to the gov- 
ernor when he had his adventures with the Indian 
and the ice. 

If any of you know anything about how wars 
are brought on, you may well think there was 
soon going to be war in America. Both parties 
wanted the land, and both were ready to fight to 
get it, and when people feel that way fighting is 
not far off. 

Indeed, the spring of 1754 was not far advanced 
before both sides were on the move. Washington 
had picked out a beautiful spot for a fort. This 



io8 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

was where the two rivers which form the Ohio 
come together. On that spot the city of Pitts- 
burg now stands; but then it was a very wild place. 

As soon as the governor heard Washington's re- 
port he sent a party of men in great haste to build 
a fort at that point. But in a short time a larger 
party of French came down the Allegheny River 
in canoes and drove the English workmen away. 
Then they finished the fort for themselves and 
called it Fort Duquesne. 

Meanwhile Washington was on his way back. 
A force of four hundred Virginians had been sent 
out under an officer named Colonel Frye. But the 
colonel died on the march, and young Washing- 
ton, then only twenty-two years old, found himself 
at the head of a regiment of soldiers, and about to 
start a great war. Was it not a difficult position 
for so young a man? Not many men of that age 
would have known what to do, but George Wash- 
ington was not an ordinary man. 

While the Virginians were marching west, the 
French were marching south, and It was not long 
before they came together. A party of French hid 
in a thicket to watch the English, and Washington, 
thinking they were there for no good, ordered his 
men to fire. They did so, and the leader of the 
French was killed. This was the first shot in the 
coming war. 

But the youthful commander soon found that 



A HERO OF THE COLONIES 109 

the French were too strong for him. He built a 
sort of fort at a place called Great Meadows, and 
named It Fort Necessity. It was hardly finished 
before the French and Indians came swarming all 
around It and a severe fight began. 

The Virginians fought well, but the French were 
too strong, and fired Into the fort till Washington 
had to surrender. This took place on July 4, 
1754, just twenty-two years before the American 
Declaration of Independence. Washington and 
his men were allowed to march home with their 
arms, and the young colonel was very much praised 
when he got home, for everybody thought he had 
done his work In the best possible way. 

When the news of this battle crossed the ocean 
there was great excitement In England and France, 
and both countries sent soldiers to America. 
Those from England were under a general named 
Braddock, a man who knew all about fighting In 
England, but knew nothing about fighting In 
America. And what was worse, he would let no- 
body tell him. Washington generously tried to 
do so, but he got snubbed by the proud British 
general for his pains. 

After a while away marched General Braddock, 
with his British soldiers In their fine red coats. 
Washington went with him with a body of Vir- 
ginians dressed In plain colony clothes. On and 
on they went, through the woods and over the 



no THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

mountains, cutting down trees and opening a road 
for their wagons, and bravely beating their drums 
and waving their flags. At length they came near 
Fort Duquesne, the drums still beating, the flags 
still flying, the gun barrels glittering in the bright 
sunshine. 

" Let me go ahead with my Virginians," said 
Washington. " They know all about Indian fight- 
ing." 

"That for your Indians!" said Braddock, 
snapping his fingers. " They will not stay in their 
hiding places long when my men come up." 

Soon after they came into a narrow place, with 
steep banks and thick bushes all around. And 
suddenly loud Indian war-whoops and the crack 
of guns came from those bushes. Not a man 
could be seen, but bullets flew like hail-stones 
among the red-coats. The soldiers fired back, 
but they wasted their bullets on the bushes. 
Washington and his men ran into the woods and 
got behind trees hke the Indians, but Braddock 
would not let his men do the same, and they were 
shot down like sheep. At length General Brad- 
dock fell wounded, and then his brave red-coats 
turned and ran for their lives. Very likely not 
a man of them would have got away If Washing- 
ton and his men had not kept back the French 
and Indians. 

This defeat was a bad business for the poor set- 



A HERO OF THE COLONIES m 

tiers, for the savage redskins began murdering 
them on all sides, and during all the rest of the 
war Washington was kept busy lighting with 
these Indians. Not till four years afterwards was 
he able to take Fort Duquesne from the French. 

Then another body of men was sent through 
the woods and over the mountains to capture this 
fort. But their general did as Braddock had done 
before him, spending so much time cutting a high- 
road through the woods that the whole season 
passed away and he was ready to turn and march 
back. Then Washington, who was with him, 
asked permission to go forward with his rangers. 
The general told him to go and he hurried through 
the woods and to the fort. When he came near 
it the French took to their boats and paddled 
off down the river, so that Washington took the 
fort without firing a shot. 



CHAPTER X 

THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR AND THE 
STORY OF THE ACADIANS 

HAVE any of my young readers read the 
beautiful poem of " Evangeline," written 
by the poet Longfellow? Very likely it 
Is too old for you, though the time will come 
when you will read it and enjoy It greatly. 
Evangeline was a pretty and pious woman who 
lived in a French settlement called Acadia, on the 
Atlantic coast. You will not find this name on 
any of your maps, but must look for Nova Scotia, 
by which name Acadia Is now known. The 
story of Evangeline tells us about the cruel way 
in which the poor Acadlans were treated by the 
English. It Is a sad and pathetic story, as you 
will see when you have read it. 

It was one of the wicked results of the war 
between the French and the English. There were 
many cruel deeds In this war, and the people who 
suffered the most were those who had the least 
to do with the fighting. In one place a quiet, 
happy family of father, mother and children, liv- 
ing on a lonely farm, and not dreaming of any 

112 



FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR 113 

danger, suddenly hear the wild war-whoop of the 
Indians, and soon see their doors broken open 
and their house blazing, and are carried off Into 
cruel captivity — those who are not killed on the 
spot. In another place all the people of a vil- 
lage are driven from their comfortable homes by- 
soldiers and forced to wander and beg their bread 
In distant lands. And all this takes place because 
the kings of England and France, three thousand 
miles away, are quarreling about some lands which 
do not belong to either of them. If those who 
brought on wars had to suffer for them they would 
soon come to an end. But they revel and feast 
in their splendid palaces while poor and innocent 
people endure the suffering. The war that began 
in the wilds of western Pennsylvania, between the 
French and Indians and the English lasted seven 
years, from 1754 to 1761. During that time 
there were many terrible battles, and thousands 
of soldiers were killed, and there was much suffer- 
ing and slaughter among the people, and burning 
of houses, and destruction of property, and hor- 
rors of all sorts. 

It is called the French and Indian War, because 
there were many Indians on the side of the French. 
There were some on the side of the English, also. 
Indians are very savage and cruel In their way of 
fighting, as you already know. I shall have to 
tell you one instance of their love of bloodshed. 



114 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

One of the English forts, called Fort William 
Henry, which stood at the southern end of Lake 
George, had to surrender to the French, and its 
soldiers were obliged to march out and give up 
their guns. 

There were a great many Indians with the 
French, and while the prisoners stood outside the 
fort, without a gun in their hands, the savage men 
attacked them and began to kill them with knives 
and tomahawks. The French had promised to 
protect them, but they stood by and did nothing 
to stop this terrible slaughter, and many of the 
helpless soldiers were murdered. Others were 
carried off by the Indians as prisoners. It was 
the most dreadful event of the whole cruel war. 

I must now ask you to look on a map of the 
State of New York, if you have any. There you 
will find the Hudson River, and follow It up north 
from the city of New York, past Albany, the capi- 
tal of the state, until It ends in a region of moun- 
tains. Near Its upper waters Is a long, narrow 
lake named Lake George, which is full of beauti- 
ful islands. North of that is a much larger lake 
named Lake Champlain, which reaches up nearly 
to Canada. 

The British had forts on the Hudson River and 
Lake George and the French on Lake Champlain, 
and also between the two lakes, where stood the 
strong Fort Ticonderoga. It was around these 



FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR 115 

forts and along these lakes that most of the fight- 
ing took place. For a long time the French had 
the best of it. The British lost many battles and 
were driven back. But they had the most soldiers, 
and in the end they began to defeat the French 
and drive them back, and Canada became the seat 
of war. But let me tell you the story of the 
Acadians. 

Acadia was a country which had been settled 
by the French a long, long time before, away 
back in 1604, before there was an English settle- 
ment in America. Captain John Smith, you know, 
came to America in 1607, three years afterwards. 
Acadia was a very fertile country, and the settlers 
planted fields of grain and orchards of apples and 
other fruits, and lived a very happy life, with neat 
houses and plenty of good food, and in time the 
whole country became a rich farming land. 

But the British would not let these happy farm- 
ers alone. Every time there was trouble with the 
French, soldiers were sent to Acadia. It was 
captured by the British in 1690, but was given 
back to France in 1697, when that war ended. 
It was taken again by the British in the war that 
began in 1702, and this time it was not given 
back. Even its name of Acadia was taken away, 
and it was called Nova Scotia, which is not nearly 
so pretty a name. 

Thus it was that, when the new war with 



1 1 6 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

France began, Acadia was held as a province of 
Great Britain. To be sure the most of its people 
were descended from the old French settlers and 
did not like their British masters, but they could 
not help themselves, and went on farming In their 
old fashion. They were Ignorant, simple-minded 
countrymen, who looked upon France as their 
country, and were not willing to be British sub- 
jects. 

That Is the way with the French. It Is the 
same to-day In Canada, which has been a colony 
of Great Britain for nearly a century and a half. 
The descendants of the former French still speak 
their old language and love their old country, and 
now sometimes fight the British with their votes as 
they once did with their swords. 

The British did not hold the whole of Acadia. 
The country now called New Brunswick, which 
lies north of Nova Scotia, was part of It, and was 
still held by the French. In 1755 the British gov- 
ernment decided to attempt the capture of this 
country, and sent out soldiers for that purpose. 
Fighting began, but the French defended them- 
selves bravely, and the British found they had a 
hard task to perform. 

What made It worse for them was that some 
of the Acadlans, who did not want to see the 
British succeed, acted as spies upon them, and told 
the French soldiers about their movements, so that 



FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR 117 

the French were everywhere ready for them. 
And the Acadlans helped the French in other ways, 
and gave the British a great deal of trouble. 

This may have been wrong, but it was natural. 
Every one feels like helping his friends against 
his enemies. But you may be sure that it made 
the British very angry, and in the end they took 
a cruel resolution. This was to send all the 
Acadians away from their native land to far-off, 
foreign countries. It was not easy to tell who 
were acting as spies, so the English government 
ordered them all to be removed. They were told 
they might stay if they would swear to be true sub- 
jects of the king of England, but this the most of 
them would not do, for they were French at heart, 
and looked on King Louis of France as their 
true and rightful ruler. 

Was not this very cruel? There were hundreds 
of boys and girls like yourselves among these poor 
Acadians, who had happy homes, and loved to 
work and play in their pretty gardens and green 
fields, and whose fathers and mothers did no harm 
to any one. But because a few busy men gave 
news to the French, all of these 'were to be torn 
from their comfortable homes and sent far away 
to wander in strange lands, where many of them 
would have to beg for bread. It was a heartless 
act, and the world has ever since said so, and 
among all the cruel things the British have done. 



ii8 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

the removal of the Acadians from their homes Is 
looked upon as one of the worst. 

When soldiers are sent to do a cruel thing they 
are very apt to do It In the most brutal fashion. 
The Acadians did not know what* was to be done. 
It was kept secret for fear they might run away 
and hide. A large number of soldiers were sent 
out, and they spread like a net over a wide stretch 
of country. Then they marched together and 
drove the people before them. The poor farmers 
might be at their dinners or working in their fields, 
but they were told that they must stop everything 
and leave their homes at once, for they were to 
be sent out of the country. Just think of it! 
What a grief and terror they must have been in ! 

They were hardly given time to gather the few 
things they could carry with them, and on all sides 
they were driven like so many sheep to the sea- 
side town of Annapolis, to which ships had been 
brought to carry them away. More than six 
thousand of these unhappy people, old and young, 
men, women and little ones, were gathered there; 
many of them weeping bitterly, many more with 
looks of despair on their faces, all of them sad at 
heart and very likely wishing they were dead. 

Around them were soldiers to keep them from 
running away. They were made to get on the 
ships in such haste that families were often sepa- 
rated, husband and wife, or children and their 



FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR 119 

mothers, being put on different ships and sent to 
different places. And for fear that some of them 
might come back again their houses were burned 
and their farms laid waste. Many of them went 
to the French settlements in Louisiana, and others 
to other parts of America. Poor exiles! they 
were scattered widely over the earth. Some of 
them in time came back to their loved Acadia, but 
the most of them never saw it again. It was this 
dreadful act about which Longfellow wrote in his 
poem of Evangeline. 

Now I must tell you how the French and Indian 
War ended. The French had two important cities 
in Canada, Montreal and Quebec. Quebec was 
built on a high and steep hill and was surrounded 
by strong walls, behind which were more than 
eight thousand soldiers. It was not an easy city 
to capture. 

A large British fleet was sent against it, and also 
an army of eight thousand men, under General 
Wolfe. For two or three months they fired at the 
city from the river below, but the French scorned 
them from their steep hill-top. At length Gen- 
eral Wolfe was told of a narrow path by which 
he might climb the hill. One dark night he tried 
it, and by daybreak a large body of men had 
reached the hill-top, and had dragged up a num- 
ber of cannon with them. 

When the French saw this they were frightened. 



I20 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

They hurried out of the city, thinking they could 
drive the English over the precipice before any 
more of them got up. They were mistaken in 
this. The English met them boldly, and in the 
battle that followed they gained the victory and 
Quebec fell into their hands. 

General Wolfe was mortally wounded, but when 
he was told that the French were in flight, he said: 
" God be praised ! I die happy." 

Montcalm, the French general, also fell 
wounded. When he knew that he must die he 
said: " So much the better; I shall not live to see 
the surrender of Quebec." 

The next year Montreal was taken, and the war 
ended. And m the treaty of peace France gave 
up all her colonies in America. England got 
Canada and Spain got Louisiana. All North 
America now belonged to two nations, England 
and Spain. 



CHAPTER XI 

THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION 

I SHOULD be glad to have some of you take 
a steamboat ride up the broad Hudson 
River, past the city of New York, and on- 
ward In the track of the " Half Moon," Henry 
Hudson's ship. If you did so, you would come In 
time to the point where this ship stopped and 
turned back. Here, where Hudson and his 
Dutch sailors saw only a great spread of forest 
trees, stretching far back from the river bank, our 
modern travelers would see the large and hand- 
some city of Albany, the capital of the State of 
New York. 

This Is one of the hundreds of fine cities which 
have grown up In our country since Henry Hud- 
son's time. A hundred and fifty years ago It was 
a small place, not much larger than many of our 
villages. But even then It was of Importance, for 
In It was taken the first step towards our great 
Union of States. I shall have to tell you what 
this step was, for you will certainly want to know. 
Well, at the time I speak of there was no such 
thing as an American Union. There were thlr- 

121 



122 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

teen colonies, reaching from New Hampshire 
down to Georgia. But each of these was hke a 
little nation of its own; each had its own govern- 
ment, made its own laws, and fought its own fights. 
This was well enough In one way, but It was not 
so well in another. At one time the people had 
the Indians to fight with, at another time the 
French, and sometimes both of these together, and 
many of them thought that they could do their 
fighting better if they were united into one coun- 
try. 

So in the year 1754 the colonies sent some of 
their best men to Albany, to talk over this matter, 
and see if a union of the colonies could not be 
made. This is what I meant when I said that 
the first step towards the American Union was 
taken at Albany. 

Of these men, there is only one I shall say any- 
thing about. This man's name you should know 
and remember, for he was one of the noblest and 
wisest men that ever lived in this country. His 
name was Benjamin Franklin. Forty years be- 
fore this time he was a little Boston boy at work 
in his father's shop, helping him make candles. 
Afterwards he learned how to print, and then, in 
1723, he went to Philadelphia, where he soon had 
a shop and a newspaper office, and in time became 
rich. 

There was nothing going on that Franklin did 



CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION 123 

not take part In. In his shop he bound books, he 
made Ink, he sold rags, soap, and coHee. He was 
not ashamed of honest work, and would take off 
his coat and wheel his papers along the street In 
a wheelbarrow. He started many Institutions In 
Philadelphia which are now very Important. 
Among these there are a great university, a large 
hospital, and a fine library. No doubt you have 
read how he brought down the lightning from the 
clouds along the string of a kite, and proved that 
lightning Is the same thing as electricity. And he 
took an active part In all the political movements 
of the time. That Is why he came to be sent to 
Albany in 1754, as a member of the Albany Con- 
vention. 

Franklin always did things In ways that set peo- 
ple to thinking. When he went to Albany he took 
with him copies of a queer picture which he had 
printed In his newspaper. This was a snake cut 
Into thirteen pieces. Under each piece was the 
first letter of the name of a colony, such as " P '* 
for Pennsylvania. Beneath the whole were the 
words " Unite or die." 

That was like Franklin; he was always doing 
something odd. The cut-up snake stood for the 
thirteen divided colonies. What Franklin meant 
was that they could not exist alone. A snake is 
not of much account when it is chopped up Into 
bits, but It Is a dangerous creature when It Is whole. 



124 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

He proposed that there should be a grand council 
of all the colonies, a sort of Congress, meeting 
every year In Philadelphia, which was the most 
central large city. Over them all was to be a gov- 
ernor-general appointed by the king. This council 
could make laws, lay taxes, and perform other Im- 
portant duties. 

That Is enough to say about Franklin's plan, 
for It was not accepted. It was passed by the con- 
vention, It Is true, but the king would not have It 
and the colonies did not want It; so the snake still 
lay stretched out along the Atlantic in thirteen 
pieces. Then came the great war with the French 
of which I have told you. After that was over, 
things came to pass which In the end forced the 
colonies to combine. Thus Franklin's plan, or 
something like It, was in time carried out, but for 
many years the country was in a terrible state. 
This is what I am now going to tell you about. 

You should know that the war with the French 
cost the king and the colonies a great deal of 
money. The king of England at that time was 
named George. He was an obstinate man, but 
not a very wise one, as you will think when you 
have learned more ^bout him. One thing he 
wanted to do was to send soldiers to America to 
keep the French from getting back what they had 
lost, and he asked the people to pay these soldiers. 
He also asked them to send him money to pay 



CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION 125 

the governors and judges whom he had chosen to 
rule over them. But the people thought they 
could take care of themselves, and did' not want 
British soldiers. And they preferred to pay 
the governors and judges themselves as they had 
always done, and did not want King George to 
do It for them. So they would not send him the 
money he asked for. 

Some of you may think this was very mean In 
the Americans, after all the British had done to 
help them in their war with the French. But they 
knew very well what they were about. They 
thought that If they gave the king a dollar to-day 
he might want five dollars to-morrow, and ten 
dollars the next day. They judged It best not to 
begin with the dollar. Kings, you should know, 
do not always make the best use of money that is 
given them by their people. 

And that was not all. The people In the colo- 
nies did not like the way they had been treated by 
the English. They had mountains full of Iron, 
but the king would not let them make this iron 
Into tools. They had plenty of wool, but he would 
not let them weave it into cloth. They must buy 
these and other things in England, and must keep 
at farming; but they were not allowed to send 
their grain to England, but had to eat it all at 
home. They could not even send goods from one 
colony to another. Thus they were to be kept 



126 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

poor that the rich English merchants and manu- 
facturers might grow rich. 

These Vere some of the things the American 
people had to complain of. There were still other 
things, and a good many of the Americans had 
very little love for the English king and people. 
They felt that they were in a sort of slavery, and 
almost as if they had ropes on their hands and 
chains on their feet. 

When King George was told that the Ameri- 
cans would not send him money he was very angry. 
I am afraid he called them bad names. They 
were a low, ignorant, ungrateful set, he said, and 
he would show them who was their master. He 
would tax them and get money from them in that 
way. So the English Parliament, which is a body 
of lawmakers like our Congress, came together 
and passed laws to tax the Americans. 

The first tax they laid is what is called a stamp 
tax. I fancy you know very well what that is, for 
we have had a stamp tax In this country more than 
once, when the government was in need of money. 
Everybody who wrote a bank check, or made any 
legal paper, or sent away an express package, had 
to buy a stamp from the government and put it on 
the paper; and stamps had to be used on many 
other things. 

But there is this difference. Our people were 
quite willing to buy these stamps, but they were 



CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION 127 

not willing to buy the stamps which the British 
government sent them in 1765. Why? Well, 
they had a good reason for it, and this was that 
they had nothing to do with making the law. The 
English would not pay any taxes except those made 
by the people whom they elected to Parliament, 
and the Americans said they had the same right. 
They were not allowed to send any members to 
Parliament, so they said that Parliament had no 
right to tax them. Their own legislatures might 
vote to send the king money, but the English Par- 
liament had no right to vote for them. 

When the king found that the Americans would 
not use his stamps he tried another plan. He laid 
a tax on tea and some other goods. He thought 
that our people could not do without tea, so he sent 
several shiploads across the ocean, expecting them 
to buy it and pay the tax. But he soon found 
that the colonists had no more use for taxed tea 
than for stamps. They would not even let the 
captains bring their tea on shore, except at Charles- 
ton, and there it was packed in damp cellars, where 
it soon rotted. A ship sent to Annapolis was set 
on fire and burned to the water's edge with the 
tea in it. 

But the most stirring event took place at Bos- 
ton. There one night, while the tea-ship lay at a 
wharf in the harbor, a number of young men 
dressed like Indians rushed on board with a loud 



128 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

war-whoop and began to break open the tea-chests 
with their hatchets and pour the tea into the har- 
bor. This was the famous "' Boston tea-party." 

Americans Hked tea, but not tea with an EngHsh 
tax on it. They boiled leaves and roots and made 
some sort of tea out of them. It was poor stuff, 
but they did not pay any tax. And they would not 
buy any cloth or other goods brought from Eng- 
land. If the king was angry and stubborn they 
were angry and stubborn, too, and every day they 
grew more angry, until many of them began to 
think that they would be better off without a king. 
They were not the kind of people to be made 
slaves of easily by King George or any other king. 

When the king heard of the " Boston tea-party " 
he was in a fury. He would make Boston pay 
well for its tea, he said. So he sent soldiers there, 
and he gave orders that no ships should go into 
or out of Boston harbor. This stopped most of 
the business of the town, and soon the poor people 
had no work to do and very little to eat. But 
they had crowded meetings at Faneuil Hall, where 
Samuel Adams and John Hancock and other pa- 
triots talked to them of their rights and wrongs. 
It began to look as if war would soon come. 

The time had come at last for a union of the 
colonies. What Franklin had failed to do at Al- 
bany in 1754 was done at Philadelphia in 1774. 



CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION 129 

A meeting was held there which was called a Con- 
gress, and was made up of some of the best men 
of the country sent from the colonies. One of 
these was George Washington, who had lived on 
his farm at Mount Vernon since the end of the 
French War. 

Congress sent a letter to the king, asking him to 
give the people of this country the same rights that 
the people of England had. There was no harm 
in this, I am sure, but It made the king more ob- 
stinate still. I have said he was not a wise man. 
Most people say he was a very foolish one, or he 
would have known that the people of the colonies 
would fight for their rights if they could not get 
them In peace. 

All around Boston the farmers and villagers 
began to collect guns and powder and to drill men 
into soldiers. These were called " minute men," 
which meant that they would be ready to fight at 
a minute's notice, if they were asked to. When 
people begin to get ready In this way, war is usu- 
ally not far off. 

One night at Boston a man named Paul Re- 
vere stood watching a distant steeple till he saw a 
light suddenly flash out through the darkness. 
Then he leaped on his horse and rode at full speed 
away. That light was a signal telling him that 
British soldiers were on the march to Concord 



I30 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

twenty miles away, to destroy some powder and 
guns which had been gathered there for the use 
of these " minute men." 

Away rode Revere through the night, rousing 
up the people and shouting to them that the British 
soldiers were coming. He was far ahead of the 
soldiers, so that when they reached the village of 
Lexington, ten miles from Boston, the people were 
wide awake, and a party of minute men was drawn 
up on the village green. The soldiers were or- 
dered to fire on these men, and some of them fell 
dead. Those were the first shots in a great war. 
It was the 19th of April, 1775. 

The British marched on to Concord, but the 
farmers had carried away most of the stores and 
buried them in the woods. Then the red-coats 
started back, and a terrible march they had of it. 
For all along the road were farmers with guns 
in their hands, firing on the troops from be- 
hind trees and stone walls. Some of the soldiers 
got back to Boston, but many of them lay dead in 
the road. The poor fellows killed at Lexington 
were terribly avenged. 

Far and wide spread the news, and on all sides the 
farmers left their plows and took down their rifles, 
and thousands of them set out along the roads to 
Boston. Soon there were twenty thousand armed 
men around the town, and the British were shut 
up like rats in a trap. The American people were 



CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION 131 

in rebellion against the king and war had begun. 

It was to be a long and dreadful war, but it led 
to American liberty, and that was a thing well 
worth fighting for. While the people were laying 
siege to Boston, Congress was in session at Phila- 
delphia, talking about what had best be done. 
One good thing they did was to make George 
Washington commander-in-chief of the army and 
send him to Boston to fight the British there. 
They could not have found a better soldier in all 
America. 

The next good thing took place a year later. 
This was the great event which you celebrate with 
fireworks every 4th of July. Congress decided 
that this country ought to be free, and no longer 
to be under the rule of an English king. So a 
paper was written by a member from Virginia 
named Thomas Jefferson, with the help of Benja- 
min Franklin and some others. The paper is 
known by the long name of " Declaration of In- 
dependence." It declared that the American colo- 
nies were free from British rule, and in future 
would take care of themselves. It was on the 4th 
of July, 1776, that this great paper was adopted 
by Congress, and on that day the Republic of the 
United States of America was born. That Is why 
our people have such a glad and noisy time every 
4th of July. 

Everywhere the people were full of joy when 



132 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

they heard what had been done. In the state 
house at Philadelphia rang out the great bell on 
which the words, " Proclaim liberty throughout 
the land and to all the Inhabitants thereof." In 
New York the statue of King George was pulled 
down and thrown Into the dust of the street. The 
people did not know what dark days lay before 
them, but they were ready to suffer much for the 
sake of liberty, and to risk all they had, life and 
all, for the freedom of their native land. 



CHAPTER XII 

FIGHTING FOR FREEDOM 

ANY of my readers who are true, sound- 
hearted Americans, and I am sure all of 
them are that, would have been glad to 
see how the New England farmers swarmed 
around Boston in April, 1775. Some of them had 
fought in the French War, and brought with them 
their old rusty muskets, which they knew very well 
how to use. And most of them were hunters and 
had learned how to shoot. And all of them were 
bold and brave and were determined to have a 
free country. The English red-coat soldiers in 
Boston would soon find that these countrymen were 
not men to be laughed at, even if they had not 
been trained in war. 

One morning the English woke up and rubbed 
their eyes hard, for there, on a hill that overlooked 
the town, was a crowd of Americans. They had 
been at work all night, digging and making earth- 
works to fight behind, and now had quite a fort. 
The English officers did not like the look of 
things, for the Americans could fire from that hill 
— Bunker Hill, they called it — straight down 

^33 



134 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

into the town. They must be driven away or they 
vwould drive the troops away. 

I can tell you that was a busy and bloody day 
for Boston. The great war-ships in the harbor 
thundered with their cannon at the men on the hill. 
And the soldiers began to march up the hill, think- 
ing that the Yankees would run hke sheep when 
they saw the red-coats coming near. But the 
Yankees were not there to run. 

" Don't fire, boys, till you see the whites of their 
eyes," said brave General Prescott. 

So the Yankee boys waited till the British were 
close at hand. Then they fired and the red-coats 
fell in rows, for the farmers did not waste their 
bullets. Those that did not fall scampered in 
haste down the hill. It was a strange sight to see 
British soldiers running away from Yankee farm- 
ers. 

After a while the British came again. They 
were not so sure this time. Again the Yankee 
muskets rattled along the earthworks, and again 
the British turned and ran — those who Vv ere 
able to. 

They could never have taken that hill if the 
farmer soldiers had not run out of powder. 
When the red-coats came a third time the Yankees 
could not fire, and had to fight them with the butts 
of their guns. So the British won the hill; but 



FIGHTING FOR FREEDOM 135 

they had found that the Yankee farmers were not 
cowards; after that time they never Hked to march 
against American earthworks. 

Not long after the battle of Bunker Hill Gen- 
eral Washington came to command the Americans, 
and he spent months in drilling and making sol- 
diers out of them. He also got a good supply of 
powder and muskets and some cannon, and one 
dark night in March, 1776, he built a fort on 
another hill that looked down on Boston. 

I warrant you, the British were alarmed when 
they looked up that hill the next morning and saw 
cannon on its top and men behind the cannon. 
They would have to climb that hill as they had 
done Bunker Hill, or else leave Boston. But they 
had no fancy for another Bunker Hill, so they 
decided to leave. They went on board their ships 
and sailed away, and Washington and his men 
marched joyfully into the town. That was a great 
day for America, and it was soon followed by the 
4th of July and the glorious Declaration of Inde- 
pendence. Since that 4th of July no king has ever 
ruled over the United States. 

We call this war the American Revolution. Do 
you know what a revolution Is? It means the do- 
ing away with a bad government and replacing It 
with a better one. In this country it meant that 
our people were tired of the rule of England and 



136 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

wished to govern themselves. They had to fight 
hard for their freedom, It Is true, but It was well 
worth fighting for. 

The war was a long and dreadful one. It went 
on for seven long years. At one time every- 
thing seemed lost; at other times all grew bright 
and hopeful. And thus It went on, up and down, 
to the end. I cannot tell you all that took place, 
but I will give you the Important facts. 

After the British left Boston, they sailed about 
for a time, and then they came with a large army 
to New York. Washington was there with his sol- 
diers to meet them, and did his best, but everything 
seemed to go wrong. First, the Americans were 
beaten In battle and had to march out of New 
York and let the British march In. Then Wash- 
ington and his ragged men were obliged to hasten 
across the State of New Jersey with a strong Brit- 
ish force after them. They were too weak to face 
the British. 

When they got to the Delaware River the Amer- 
icans crossed It and took all the boats, so that the 
British could not follow them. It was now near 
winter time, and both armies went Into winter 
quarters. They faced each other, but the wide 
river ran between. 

You may well think that by this time the Ameri- 
can people were getting very down-hearted. 
Many of them thought that all was lost, and that 



FIGHTING FOR FREEDOM 137 

they would have to submit to King George. The 
army dwindled away and no new soldiers came in, 
so that it looked as if it would go to pieces. It 
was growing very dark for American liberty. 

But there was one man who did not despair, and 
that man was George Washington. He saw that 
something must be done to stir up the spirits of 
the people, and he was just the man to do it. It 
was a wonderful Christmas he kept that year. All 
Christmas day his ragged and hungry soldiers were 
marching up their side of the Delaware, and cross- 
ing the river in boats, though the wind was biting 
cold, and the air was full of falling snow, and the 
broken ice was floating in great blocks down the 
river; but nothing stopped the gallant soldiers. 
All Christmas night they marched down the other 
side of the river, though their shoes were so bad 
that the ground became reddened by blood from 
their feet. Two of the poor fellows were frozen 
to death. 

At Trenton, a number of miles below, there was 
a body of German soldiers. These had been hired 
by King George to help him fight his battles. 
That day they had been eating a good Christmas 
dinner while the hungry Americans were marching 
through the snow. At night they went to bed, not 
dreaming of danger. 

They were wakened in the morning by shots 
and shouts. Washington and his men were in the 



138 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

streets of the town. They had hardly time to 
seize their guns before the ragged Yankees were all 
around them and nearly all of them were made 
prisoners of war. 

Was not that a great and glorious deed? It 
filled the Americans with new hope. In a few 
days afterwards, Washington defeated the British 
in another battle, and then settled down with his 
ragged but brave men in the hills of New Jersey. 
He did not go behind a river this time. The 
British knew where he was and could come to see 
him if they wanted to. But they did not come. 
Very likely they had seen enough of him for that 
winter. 

The next year things went wrong again for 
Washington. A large British army sailed from 
New York and landed at the head of Chesapeake 
Bay. Then they marched overland to Philadel- 
phia. Washington fought a battle with them on 
Brandywine Creek, but his men were defeated and 
the British marched on and entered Philadelphia. 
They now held the largest cities of the country, 
Philadelphia and New York. 

While the British were living in plenty and hav- 
ing a very good time in the Quaker city, the poor 
Americans spent a wretched and terrible winter at 
a place called Valley Forge. The winter was a 
dismally cold one, and the men had not half 



FIGHTING FOR FREEDOM 139 

enough food to eat or clothes to wear, and very 
poor huts to live in. They suffered dreadfully, 
and before the spring came many of them died 
from disease and hardship. 

Poor fellows 1 they were paying dearly for their 
struggle for liberty. But there was no such de- 
spair this winter as there had been the winter be- 
fore, for news came from the north that warmed 
the soldiers up like a fire. Though Washington 
had lost a battle, a great victory had been gained 
by the Americans at Saratoga, in the upper part of 
New York state. 

While General Howe was marching on Philadel- 
phia, another British army, under General Bur- 
goyne, had been marching south from Canada, 
along the line of Lake Champlain and Lake 
George. But Burgoyne and his men soon found 
themselves in a tight place. Food began to run 
short and a regiment of a thousand men was sent 
into Vermont to seize some stores. They were 
met by the Green Mountain boys, led by Colonel 
Stark, a brave old soldier. 

" There are the red-coats," said the bold colonel. 
" We must beat them to-day, or Molly Stark is a 
widow." ^ 

1 All the accounts agree that Colonel Stark spoke of his 
wife as " Molly Stark." But it has been found that his wife's 
name was Elizabeth ; so he may have said ** Betty Stark." 



I40 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

Beat them they did. Only seventy men got 
back to Burgoyne. All the rest were killed or 
captured. 

Another force, under Colonel St. Leger, 
marched south from Oswego, on Lake Ontario. 
A large body of Indians was with him. This 
army stopped to besiege a fort in the wilderness, 
and General Arnold marched to help the fort. 

The way Arnold defeated St. Leger was a very 
curious one. He sent a half-witted fellow into 
the Indian camp with the tale that a great Ameri- 
can force was coming. The messenger came run- 
ning in among the savages, with bullet-holes in his 
clothes. He seemed half scared to death, and 
told the Indians that a vast host was coming after 
him as thick as the leaves on the trees. 

This story frightened the Indians and they ran 
off In great haste through the woods. When the 
British soldiers saw this they fell into such a terror 
that they took to their heels, leaving all their tents 
and cannon behind them. The people in the fort 
did not know what it meant, till Arnold came up 
and told them how he had won a victory without 
firing a shot, by a sort of fairy story. 

All this was very bad for Burgoyne. The In- 
dians he brought with him began to leave. At 
length he found himself In a terrible plight. His 
provisions were nearly gone, he was surrounded 
by the Americans, and after fighting two battles 



FIGHTING FOR FREEDOM 141 

he retreated to Saratoga. Here he had to sur- 
render. He and all his army became prisoners to 
the Americans. 

We cannot wonder that this warmed up the 
Americans like a fire. It filled the English with 
despair. They began to think that they would 
never win back the colonies. 

One thing the good news did was to get the 
French to come to the help of the Americans. 
Benjamin Franklin was then in Paris, and he asked 
the king to send ships and men and money to Amer- 
ica. The French had no love for the British, who 
had taken from them all their colonies in America, 
so they did as Franklin wished. 

There are two more things I wish to tell you In 
this chapter, one good and one bad. When the 
British in Philadelphia heard that the French were 
coming to help the Americans, they were afraid 
they might be caught in a trap. So they left in 
great haste and marched for New York. Wash- 
ington followed and fought a battle with them, 
but they got away. After that Washington's 
army laid siege to New York, as It had formerly 
done to Boston. 

That was the good thing. The bad thing was 
this. General Benedict Arnold, who had defeated 
St. Leger and his Indians, and who was one of the 
bravest of the American officers, turned traitor to 
his country. He had charge of West Point, a 



142 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

strong fort on the Hudson River, and tried to 
give this up to the British. But he was found out 
and had to flee for his life. Major Andre, a 
British officer, who had been sent to talk with 
Arnold, was caught by three American scouts on 
his way back to New York. They searched him 
for papers, and found what they wanted hidden in 
his boot. Poor Andre was hung for a spy, but 
the traitor Arnold escaped. But he was hated by 
the Americans and despised by the British, and 
twenty years afterwards he died in shame and re- 
morse. 



CHAPTER XIII 

PAUL JONES, THE NAVAL HERO OF 
THE REVOLUTION 

WE are justly proud of our great war-ships, 
with their strong steel sides and their 
mighty guns, each of which can hurl a 
cannon-ball miles and miles away. And such 
balls ! Why, one of them is as heavy as a dozen 
of you tied together, and can bore a hole through 
a plate of solid steel as thick as your bodies. 

Such ships and such guns as these had not been 
dreamed of in the days of the Revolution. Then 
there were only small wooden vessels, moved by 
sails instead of steam, and a cannon-ball that 
weighed twenty-four pounds was thought very 
heavy. Six and twelve-pound balls were common. 
And to hit a ship a mile away ! It was not to be 
thought of. I tell you, in those days ships had to 
fight nearly side by side and men to fight face to 
face. To be a mile away was as good as being a 
hundred miles. 

But for all this there was some hard fighting 
done at sea in the Revolutionary War, in spite of 
the small ships and little guns. They fought 

143 



144 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

closer together, that was all. Boast as we may 
about the wonderful work done by our ships at 
Santiago and Manila in the Spanish War, we have 
better right to be proud of the deeds of our great 
naval hero of the Revolutionary War, with his rot- 
ten old ship and poor little guns, but with his stout 
heart behind them all. i 

This hero was the sturdy John Paul Jones, one 
of the boldest and bravest men that ever stood on 
a ship's deck. And his great sea fight has never 
been surpassed In all the history of naval war. I 
cannot tell you the story of the Revolution with- 
out telling about the great ocean victory of the 
bold-hearted Paul Jones. 

Ships poor enough were those we had to fight 
with. A little fleet of seven or eight small vessels, 
whose heaviest guns threw only nine-pound balls, 
and the most of them only six-pound. You could 
have thrown these yourself with one hand, though 
not so far. These were all we had at first to fight 
more than seventy British ships, with guns that 
threw eighteen-pound balls, and some still heavier. 
Do you not think it looked like a one-sided fight? 

But the Americans had one great advantage. 
They had not many merchant ships and not much to 
lose upon the seas. On the other hand, the ocean 
swarmed with the merchant ships of England, and 
with the store ships bringing supplies of guns and 
powder and food to the armies on shore. Here 



PAUL JONES 145 

were splendid prizes for our gallant seamen, and 
out of every port sailed bold privateers, or war- 
ships sent out by their owners, and not by the gov- 
ernment, sweeping the seas and bringing In many a 
richly-laden craft. 

Some of the best fighting of the war was done 
by these privateers. While they were hunting for 
merchant ships they often came across war-ships, 
and you can be sure they did not always run away. 
No, indeed; they were usually ready to fight, and 
during the war no less than sixteen war-vessels 
were captured by our ocean rovers. On the other 
hand, the British privateers did not capture a single 
American war-ship. As for merchant vessels, our 
privateers brought them In by the dozens. One 
fleet of sixty vessels set out from Ireland for the 
West Indies, and out of these thirty-five were 
gobbled up by our privateers, and their rich stores 
brought into American ports. During the whole 
war the privateers took more than seven hundred 
prizes. I might go on to tell you of some of their 
hard fights, but I think you would rather read the 
story of Paul Jones, the boldest and bravest of 
them all, the terror of the seas to the British fleet. 

Paul Jones, you should know, was born In Scot- 
land. But he made America his home. And as 
he was known to be a good sailor, he was appointed 
first lieutenant of the " Alfred," the flagship of our 
small fleet. He had the honor to be the first man 



146 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

to raise a flag on an American man-of-war, and 
that is something to be proud of. This took place 
on the " Delaware," at Philadelphia, about Christ- 
mas, 1775. 

It was an Important event for the fleet was just 
being sent out. At a given signal Lieutenant 
Jones grasped the halliards, and hauled up to the 
mizzen topmast a great flag of yellow silk. As 
it unfurled to the breeze cannon roared and crowds 
on the shore lustily cheered. In the centre of the 
flag was seen the figure of a green pine tree, and 
under this a rattlesnake lay coiled, with the warn- 
ing motto, " Don't tread on me ! " 

This was the famous rattlesnake flag. Another 
flag was raised on which were thirteen stripes, in 
turns red and white, and in the corner the British 
union jack. We then had the stripes but not the 
stars. They were to come after the Declaration 
of Independence and the union of the states. 

In August, 1776, Congress made Paul Jones 
captain of the brig " Providence," and he soon 
showed what kind of a man he was. He came 
across a fleet of five vessels, and made up his mind 
to capture the largest of them, which he thought 
to be a fine merchant ship. He got pretty close 
up before he learned his mistake. It was the 
British frigate " Solebay," strong enough to make 
mince-meat of his little brig. There was nothing 
for it but to run, and Captain Jones made haste 



PAUL JONES 147 

to get away, followed by the " Solebay." But 
the Briton gained on the American, and after a 
four-hours' run the frigate was less than a hun- 
dred yards away. It might at any minute sink 
the daring little " Providence " by a broadside. 

But Paul Jones was not the man to be caught. 
Suddenly the helm of the brig was put hard up, as 
sailors say, and the little craft turned and dashed 
across the frigate's bow. As It did so the flag of 
the republic was spread to the breeze, and a broad- 
side from the brig's guns swept the frigate's deck. 
Then, with all sail set, away dashed the " Provi- 
dence " before the breeze. As soon as the British 
got back their senses they fired all their guns at 
the brig. But not a ball hit her, and with the 
best of the wind she soon left the " Solebay " far 
behind. 

And now I must tell the story of Paul Jones* 
greatest fight. In its way It was the greatest sea- 
fight ever known. It was fought with a fleet In 
which Jones sailed from a French port, for Con- 
gress had found what a hero they had in their 
Scotch sailor, and now they made him commodore 
of a fleet. 

The flagship of this fleet was a rotten old log 
of a ship, which had sailed In the East India mer- 
chant service till its timbers were In a state of dry 
rot. It was a shapeless tub of a vessel, better fit- 
ted to He In port and keep rabbits In than to send 



148 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

out as a battle-ship. Paul Jones named it the 
" Bon Homme Richard,'' which, in English means 
*' Poor Richard." This was a name used by Ben- 
jamin Franklin for his almanac. 

It was not until the summer of 1779 that Jones 
was able to set sail. His ship had thirty-six guns, 
such as they were, and he had with him three 
other ships under French officers — the " Alli- 
ance," the ''Pallas," and the "Vengeance." 
Among his crew were a hundred American sailors, 
who had just been set free from English prisons. 
And his master's mate, Richard Dale, a man of 
his own sort, had just escaped from prison in Eng- 
land. 

Away they went, east and west, north and south, 
around the British isles, seeking for the men-of- 
war which should have swarmed in those seas, but 
finding only merchant vessels, a number of which 
were captured and their crews kept as prisoners. 
But the gallant commodore soon got tired of this. 
He had come out to fight, and he wanted to find 
something worth fighting. At length, on Septem- 
ber 23d, he came in view of a large fleet of mer- 
chant ships, forty-two in all, under the charge of 
two frigates, the " Serapis," of forty-two guns, and 
the " Countess of Scarborough," of twenty-two 
smaller guns. 

Commodore Jones left the smaller vessel for his 
consorts to deal -with, and dashed away for the 



PAUL JONES 149 

" Serapls " as fast as the tub-like " Bon Homme 
Richard " could go. The British ship was much 
stronger than his in number and weight of guns, 
but he cared very little for that. The " Serapis " 
had ten 18-pound cannon in each battery, and 
the " Bon Homme Richard " only three. And 
these were such sorry excuses for cannon that 
two of them burst at the first fire, killing and 
wounding the most of their crews. After that 
Jones did all his fighting with 12 and 8-pound 
guns; that is, with guns which fired balls of these 
weights. 

It was night when the battle began. Soon the 
i8-pounders of the" Serapis " were playing havoc 
with the sides of the " Bon Homme Richard." 
Many of the balls went clear through her and 
plunged into the sea beyond. Some struck her be- 
low the water level, and soon the rotten old craft 
was " leaking like a basket." 

It began to look desperate for Jones and his 
ship. He could not half reply to the heavy fire 
of the English guns, and great chasms were made 
in the ship's side, where the 18-pound balls tore 
out the timbers between the port holes. 

Captain Pearson of the " Serapis " looked at 
his staggering and leaking enemy, and thought it 
about time for the battle to end. 

"Have you surrendered?" he shouted across 
the water to Commodore Jones. 



150 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

" I have not yet begun to fight," was the famous 
answer of the brave Paul Jones. 

Surrender, indeed! I doubt if that word was in 
Paul Jones' dictionary. He would rather have let 
his vessel sink. The ships now drifted together, 
and by Jones' order the jib-boom of the " Serapis " 
was lashed to his mizzen-mast. This brought the 
ships so close side by side that the English gun- 
ners could not open their ports, and had to fire 
through them and blow them off. And the gun- 
ners on both sides had to thrust the handles of 
their rammers through the enemy's port holes, in 
order to load their guns. 

Affairs were now desperate. The " Bon 
Homme Richard " was on fire in several places. 
Water was pouring into her through a dozen rents. 
It seemed as if she must sink or burn. Almost 
any man except Paul Jones would have given up 
the fight. I know I should, and I fancy most of 
you would have done the same. But there was no 
give up in that man's soul. 

One would think that nothing could have been 
worse, but worse still was to come. In this crisis 
the " Alliance," one of Jones' small fleet, came up 
and fired two broadsides Into the wounded flag- 
ship, killing a number of her crew. Whether this 
was done on purpose or by mistake Is not known. 
The French captain did not like Commodore Jones, 
and most men think he played the traitor. 



PAUL JONES 151 

And another bad thing took place. There were 
two or three hundred English prisoners on the 
*' Bon Homme Richard," taken from her prizes. 
One of the American officers, thinking that all was 
over, set these men free, and they came swarming 
up. At the same time one of the crew tried to 
haul down the flag and he cried to the British for 
quarter. Paul Jones knocked him down by fling- 
ing a pistol at his head. He might sink or burn 
— but give up the ship? never! 

The tide of chance now began to turn. Richard 
Dale, the master's mate, told the English prisoners 
that the vessel was sinking, and set them at work 
pumping and fighting the fire to save their lives. 
And one of the marines, who was fighting on the 
yard-arms, dropped a hand grenade into an open 
hatch of the " Serapis." It set fire to a heap of 
gun cartridges that lay below, and these exploded, 
killing twenty of the gunners and wounding many 
more, while the ship was set on fire. This ended 
the fight. The fire of the marines from the mast- 
tops had cleared the decks of the " Serapis " of 
men. Commodore Jones aided In this with the 9- 
pounders on his deck, loading and firing them him- 
self. Captain Pearson stood alone, and when he 
heard the roar of the explosion he could bear the 
strain no longer. He ran and pulled down the 
flag, which had been nailed to the mast. 

" Cease firing," said Paul Jones. 



152 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

The " Serapis " was his. Well and nobly had 
it been won. 

Never had there been a victory gained in such 
straits. The " Bon Homme Richard " was fast 
settling down into the sea. Pump as they would, 
they could never save her. Inch by inch she sank 
deeper. Jones and his gallant crew boarded the 
" Serapis," and at nine o'clock the next morning 
the noble old craft sank beneath the ocean waves, 
laden with honor, and with her victorious flag still 
flying. The " Serapis " was brought safely into 
port. 

Captain Pearson had fought bravely, and the 
British ministry made him a knight for his courage. 

" If I had a chance to fight him again I would 
make him a lord," said brave Paul Jones. 

Never before or since has a victory been won 
under such desperate circumstances as those of Paul 
Jones, with his sinking and burning ship, his burst- 
ing guns, his escaped prisoners, and his treacherous 
consort. It was a victory to put his name forever 
on the annals of fame. 



CHAPTER XIV 

MARION THE SWAMP FOX AND GENERAL GREENE 



F 



'XAR away back In old English history there 
was a famous archer named Robin Hood, 
who lived In the deep woods with a bold 
band of outlaws like himself. He and his band 
were foes of the nobles and friends of the poor, 
and his name will never be forgotten by the peo- 
ple of England. 

No doubt you have read about the gallant 
archer. No man of his time could send an arrow 
so straight and sure as he. But we need not go 
back for hundreds of years to find our Robin 
Hood. We have had a man like him In our own 
country, who fought for us In the Revolution. His 
name was Francis Marlon, and he was known as 
the "Swamp Fox"; for he lived In the swamps 
of South Carolina as Robin Hood did In the forests 
of England, and he was the stinging foe of the 
oppressors of the people. 

I have already told you about the war in the 
North, and of how the British, after doing all 
they could to overthrow Washington and conquer 
the country, found themselves shut up In the city 

153 



154 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

of New York, with Washington hke a watch-dog 
outside. 

When the British generals found that the North 
was too hard a nut to crack, they thought they 
would try what they could do In the South. So 
they sent a fleet and an army down the coast, and 
before long they had taken the cities of Savannah 
and Charleston, and had their soldiers marching 
all over Georgia and South Carolina. General 
Gates, the man to whom Burgoyne surrendered, 
came down with a force of mllltia to fight them, 
but he was beaten so badly that he had to run away 
without a soldier to follow him. You can im- 
agine that the British were proud of their success. 
They thought themselves masters of the South, 
and fancied they had only to march north and be- 
come masters there, too. 

But you must not think that they were quite 
masters. Back in the woods and the swamps were 
men with arms In their hands and with love of 
country in their hearts. They were like wasps or 
hornets, who kept darting out from their nests, 
stinging the British troops, and then darting back 
out of sight. These gallant bands were led by 
Marion, Sumter, Pickens, and other brave men; 
but Marion's band was the most famous of them 
all, so I shall tell you about the Swamp Fox and 
what he did. 

I fancy all of my young friends would have 



MARION, THE SWAMP FOX 155 

laughed if they had seen Marion's band when it 
joined General Gates' army. Such scarecrows of 
soldiers they were ! There were only about twenty 
of them in all, some of them white and some black, 
some men and some boys, dressed in rags that 
fluttered in the wind, and on horses that looked as 
if they had been fed on corncobs instead of corn. 

Gates and his men did laugh at them, though 
they took care not to laugh when Marion was at 
hand. He was a small man, with a thin face, and 
dressed not much better than his men. But there 
was a look in his eye that told the soldiers he was 
not a safe man to laugh at. 

Marion and his men were soon off again on a 
scout, and after Gates and his army had been 
beaten and scattered to the winds, they went back 
to their hiding places In the swamps to play the 
hornet once more. 

Along the Pedee River these swamps extended 
for miles. There were islands of dry land far 
within, but they could only be reached by narrow 
paths which the British were not able to find. 
Only men who had spent their lives in that coun- 
try could make their way safely through this 
broad stretch of water plants and water-soaked 
ground. 

Marlon's force kept changing. Now It went 
down to twenty men, now up to a hundred or more. 
It was never large, for there was not food or shel- 



156 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

ter for many men. But there were enough of 
them to give the British plenty of trouble. They 
had their sentries on the outlook, and when a party 
of British or Tories went carelessly past out would 
spring Marion's men, send their foes flying like 
deer, and then back they would go before a strong 
body of the enemy could reach them. 

These brave fellows had many hiding places in 
the swamps and many paths out of them. To- 
day they might strike the British in one place and 
to-morrow in another many miles away. Small 
as their force was they gave the enemy far more 
trouble than Gates had done with all his army. 
Marion's headquarters was a tract of land known 
as Snow's Island, where a creek ran into the Pedee. 
It was high and dry, was covered with trees and 
thickets, and was full of game. And all around 
It spread the soaking swamp, with paths known 
only to the patriot band. Among all their hiding 
places, this was their chosen home. 

You may be sure that the British did their best 
to capture a man who gave them so much trouble 
as Marion. They sent Colonel Wemyss, one of 
their best cavalry officers, to hunt him down. 
Marlon was then far from his hiding place and 
Wemyss got on his trail. But the Swamp Fox 
was hard to catch. He lead the British a lively 
chase, and when they gave it up In despair he fol- 
lowed them back. He came upon a large body of 



MARION, THE SWAMP FOX 157 

Tories and struck them so suddenly that hardly a 
man of them escaped, while he lost only one man. 
Tories, you should know, were Americans who 
fought on the British side. 

The next man who tried to capture Marion was 
Colonel Tarleton, a hard rider and a good soldier, 
but a cruel and brutal man. He was hated in the 
South as much as Benedict Arnold was in the 
North. There is a good story told about how he 
was tricked by one of Marion's men. One day as 
he and his men were riding furiously along they 
came up to an old farmer, who was hoeing in his 
field beside the road. 

" Can you tell me what became of the man who 
galloped by here just ahead of us? " asked one of 
them. " I will give you fifty pounds if you put 
me on his track." 

" Do you mean the man on a black horse with 
a white star in its forehead? " asked the farmer. 

" Yes, that's the fellow." 

" He looked to me like Jack Davis, one of 
Marion's men, but he went past so fast that I 
could not be sure." 

*' Never mind who he was. What we want to 
know Is where to find him." 

" Bless your heart ! he was going at such a pace 
that he couldn't well stop under four or five miles. 
I'm much afeard I can't earn that fifty pounds." 

On rode the troop, and back into the woods 



158 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

went the farmer. He had not gone far before 
he came to a black horse with a white star in its 
forehead. This he mounted and rode away. The 
farmer was Jack Davis himself. 

That was the kind of men Tarleton had to deal 
with, and you may be sure that he did not catch 
any of them. He had his hunt, but he caught no 
game. 

While Marion was keeping the war alive in 
South Carolina, an army was gathering under 
General Greene, who was, next to Washington, 
the best of the American generals. With him 
were Daniel Morgan, a famous leader of riflemen, 
William Washington, a cousin of the commander- 
in-chief, and Henry Lee, or " Light-horse Harry," 
father of the famous General Lee of the Civil 
War. 

General Greene got together about two thou- 
sand men, half armed and half supplied and know- 
ing nothing about war, so that he had a poor 
chance of defeating the trained British soldiers. 
But he was a Marion on a larger scale, and knew 
when to retreat and when to advance. I must tell 
you what he did. 

In the first place Morgan the rifleman met the 
bold Colonel Tarleton and gave him a sound flog- 
ging. Tarleton hurried back to Lord Cornwallis, 
the British commander in the South. Cornwallis 
thought he would catch Morgan napping, but the 



MARION, THE SWAMP FOX 159 

lively rifleman was too wide-awake for him. He 
hurried back with the prisoners he had taken from 
Tarleton, and crossed the Catawba River just as 
the British came up. That night It rained hard, 
and the river rose so that It could not be crossed 
for three days. 

General Greene now joined Morgan, and the re- 
treat continued to the Yadkin River. This, too, 
was crossed by the Americans and a lucky rain 
again came up and swelled the river before the 
British could follow. When the British got 
across there was a race for the Dan River on the 
borders of Virginia. Greene got there first, 
crossed the stream, and held the fords or crossing- 
place against the foe. Cornwallls by this time 
had enough of it. Provisions were growing 
scarce, and he turned back. But he soon had 
Greene on his track, and he did not find his march 
a very comfortable one. 

Here I must tell you an Interesting anecdote 
about General Greene. Once, during his cam- 
paign, he entered a tavern at Salisbury, in North 
Carolina. He was wet to the skin from a heavy 
rain. Steele, the landlord, knew him and looked 
at him in surprise. 

" Why, general, you are not alone? " he asked. 

" Yes," said the general, " here I am, all alone, 
very tired, hungry, and penniless." 

Mrs. Steele hastened to set a smoking hot meal 



i6o THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

before the hungry traveler. Then, while he was 
eating, she drew from under her apron two bags 
of silver and laid them on the table before him. 

" Take these, general," she said. " You need 
them and I can do without them." 

You may see that the women as well as the men 
of America did all they could for liberty, for there 
were many others like Mrs. Steele. 

I have told you that General Greene was one of 
the ablest of the American leaders, and you have 
seen how he got the best of Cornwallis in the re- 
treat. Several times afterwards he fought with 
the British. He was always defeated. His 
country soldiers could not face the British veterans. 
But each time he managed to get as much good 
from the fight as if he had won a victory, and by 
the end of the year the British were shut up In 
Charleston and Savannah, and the South was free 
again. 

Where was Cornwallis during this time? 
Greene had led him so far north that he concluded 
to march on into Virginia and get the troops he 
would find there, and then come back. There 
was fighting going on In Virginia at this time. 
General Arnold, the traitor, was there, fighting 
against his own people. Against him was Gen- 
eral Lafayette, a young French nobleman who had 
come to the help of the Americans. 

I suppose some of you have read stories of how 



MARION, THE SWAMP FOX i6i 

a wolf or some other wild animal walked into a 
trap, from which It could not get out again. Lord 
Cornwallls was not a wild animal, but he walked 
into just such a trap after he got to Virginia. 
When he reached there he took command of 
Arnold's troops. But he found himself not yet 
strong enough to face Lafayette, so he marched 
to Yorktown, near the mouth of York River, 
where he expected to get help by sea from New 
York. Yorktown was the trap he walked into, as 
you will see. 

France had sent a fleet and an army to help the 
Americans, and just then this fleet came up from 
the West Indies and sailed into the Chesapeake, 
shutting off Yorktown from the sea. At the same 
time Washington, who had been closely watching 
what was going on, broke camp before New York 
and marched southward as fast as his men could 
go. Before Cornwallls could guess what was 
about to happen the trap was closed on him. In 
the bay near Yorktown was the strong French 
fleet; before Yorktown was the army of American 
and French soldiers. 

There was no escape. The army and the fleet 
bombarded the town. A week of this was enough 
for Lord Cornwallls. He surrendered his army, 
seven thousand strong, on October 19, 178 1, and 
the war was at an end. America was free. 



CHAPTER XV 

THE VOYAGE OF OUR SHIP OF STATE 



H 



AVE any of my young readers ever been 
to Europe? Likely enough some of you 
may have been, for even young folks cross 
the ocean now-a-days. It has come to be an easy 
journey, with our great and swift steamers. But 
in past times it was a long and difficult journey, in 
which the ship was often tossed by terrible storms, 
and sometimes was broken to pieces on the rocks 
or went to the bottom with all on board. 

What I wish to say is, that those who come 
from Europe to this country leave countries that 
are governed by kings, and come to a country that 
is governed by the people. In some of the coun- 
tries of Europe the people might almost as well 
be slaves, for they have no vote and no one to 
speak for them, and the man who rules them is 
born to power. Even In England, which is the 
freest of them all, there is a king and queen and a 
House of Lords who are born to power. The 
people can vote, but only for members of the 
House of Commons. They have nothing to do 
with the monarch or the lords. 

162 



OUR SHIP OF STATE 163 

Of course you all know that this is not the case 
in our country. Here every man in power is put 
there by the votes of the people. As President 
Lincoln said, we have a government " of the peo- 
ple, by the people, and for the people." 

We did not have such a government before the 
4th of July, 1776. Our country was then gov- 
erned by a king, and, what was worse, this king 
was on the other side of the ocean, and cared 
nothing for the people of America except as money 
bags to fill his purse. But after that 4th of July 
we governed ourselves, and had no king for lord 
and master; and we have got along very well with- 
out one. 

Now you can see what the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence and the Revolution meant. With the 
Declaration we cut loose from England. Our 
ship of state set out on its long voyage to liberty. 
The Declaration cut the chain that fastened this 
great ship to England's shores. The Revolution 
was like the stormy passage across the ocean waves. 
At times it looked as if our ship of state would 
be torn to pieces by the storms, or driven back to 
the shores from which it set sail; but then the 
clouds would break and the sun shine, and onward 
our good ship would speed. At length it reached 
the port of liberty, and came to anchor far away 
from the land of kings. 

This is a sort of parable. I think every one 



1 64 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

of you will know what it means. The people of 
this country had enough of kings and their ways, 
and of being taxed without their consent. They 
made up their minds to be free to tax and govern 
themselves. It was for this they fought in the 
Revolution, and they won liberty with their blood. 

And now, before we go on with the history of 
our country, it will be wise to stop and ask what 
kind of government the Americans gave them- 
selves. They had thrown overboard the old gov- 
ernment of kings. They had to make a new gov- 
ernment of the people. I hope you do not think 
this was an easy task. If an architect or builder 
is shown a house and told to build another like 
that, he finds It very easy to do. But If he is 
shown a heap of stone and bricks and wood and 
told to build out of them a good strong house un- 
like any he has ever seen, he will find his task a 
very hard one, and may spoil the house in his 
building. 

That was what our people had to do. They 
could have built a king's government easily 
enough. They had plenty of patterns to follow 
for that. But they had no pattern for a people's 
government, and, like the architect and his house, 
they might spoil It in the making. The fact Is, 
this is just what they did. Their first government 
was spoiled In the making, and they had to take it 
down and build it over again. 



OUR SHIP OF STATE 165 

This was done by what we call a Convention, 
made up of men called " delegates " sent by the 
several states. The Convention met In Philadel- 
phia In 1787 for the purpose of forming a Con- 
stitution; that Is, a plan of government under 
which the people should live and which the states 
and their citizens should have to obey. 

This Convention was a wonderful body of 
statesmen. Its like has not often been seen. The 
wisest and ablest men of all the states were sent to 
it. They Included all the great men — some we 
know already, Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, 
and Adams and many others of fine ability. For 
four months these men worked In secret. It was 
a severe task they had to perform, for some 
wanted one thing and some another, and many 
times It looked as If they would never agree; but 
at length all disputes were settled and their long 
labors were at an end. 

General Washington was president of the Con- 
vention, and back of the chair on which he sat the 
figure of the sun was painted on the wall. When 
It was all over, Benjamin Franklin pointed to this 
painting and said to those who stood near him: 

'' Often while we sat here, troubled by hopes 
and fears, I have looked towards that figure, and 
asked myself If It was a rising or a setting sun. 
Now I know that It is the rising sun." 

The rising sun Indeed It was, for when the Con- 



1 66 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

vention had finished Its work It had formed the 
noble Constitution under which we now hve, the 
greatest state paper which man has ever formed. 

But I fancy you want to know more about the 
noble framework of government built by the wise 
men of the Convention of 1787. 

After the Union was formed there were thir- 
teen states still, but each of these had lost some 
of its old powers. The powers taken from the 
states were given to the general government. 
Every state had still the right to manage Its own 
affairs, but such things as concerned the whole 
people were managed by the general government. 

What were these things? Let us see. There 
was the power to coin money, to lay taxes, to con- 
trol the post-office, and to make laws for the good 
of the whole nation. And there was the power to 
form an army and navy, to make treaties with 
other countries, and to declare war If we could 
not get on In peace. 

Under the Confederation which was formed 
during the Revolutionary War, the states could do 
these things for themselves; under the Constitu- 
tion they could do none of these things, but they 
could pass laws that affected only themselves, and 
could tax their own people for state purposes. 

I have spoken several times of the general gov- 
ernment. No doubt you wish to know what this 
government was like. Well, it was made up of 



OUR SHIP OF STATE 167 

three bodies, one of which made laws for the peo- 
ple, the second considered If these laws agreed 
with the Constitution, the third carried out these 
laws, or put them In force. 

The body that made the laws was named the 
Congress of the United States. It consisted of 
two sections. One was called the Senate, and was 
made up of two members from each state. As we 
have now more than forty-five states the Senate 
at present has more than ninety members. The 
other section was called the House of Represent- 
atives, and its members were voted for directly by 
the people. The members of the Senate were 
voted for by the legislatures of the states, who had 
been elected by the people. 

All the laws were to be made by Congress, but 
not one of them could become a law until it was ap- 
proved by the President. If he did not approve 
of a law, he vetoed it, that is, he returned it without 
being signed with his name, and then it could not be 
enforced as a law until voted for by two-thirds of 
the members of Congress. 

It was the duty of the President to execute or 
carry out the laws. He took the place of the king 
in other countries. But he was not born to his 
position like a king, but had to be voted for by 
the people, and could stay in office for four years 
only. Then he, or some one else, had to be voted 
for again. 



1 68 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

Next to the President was the Vice-President, 
who was to take his place if he should die or re- 
sign. While the President was in office the Vice- 
President had nothing to do except to act as pre- 
siding officer of the Senate. What we call the 
Cabinet are persons chosen by the President to 
help him in his work. You must understand that 
It takes a number of leading men and a great many 
men under these to do all the work needed to carry 
on our government. 

The third body of our government was called 
the Supreme Court. This was made up of some 
of the ablest lawyers and judges of the country. 
They were not to be voted for, but to be chosen 
by the President and then approved by the Senate. 
The duty of the Supreme Court is to consider any 
law brought to its notice and decide If It agrees 
with the Constitution. If the Court decides that a 
law Is not constitutional. It ceases to be of any 
effect. 

This Is not so very hard to understand, Is It? 
The President and Congress elected by the people; 
the Supreme Court and Cabinet selected by the 
President; the Constitution the foundation of our 
government; and the- laws passed by Congress the 
building erected on the foundation. 

Its great feature Is that It Is a republic — a gov- 
ernment " of the people, by the people, and for the 
people." Ours Is not the first republic. There 



OUR SHIP OF STATE 169 

have been others. But it is the greatest. It Is 
the only one that covers half a continent, and is 
made up of states many of which are larger than 
some of the kingdoms of Europe. For more than 
a hundred years the Constitution made in 1787 
has held good. Then It covered thirteen states 
and less than four million people; now it covers 
more than forty-five states and eighty million peo- 
ple. Then It was very poor, and had a hard 
struggle before it; now it is very rich and pros- 
perous. It has grown to be the richest country 
In the world and one of the greatest. 



CHAPTER XVI 

THE END OF A NOBLE LIFE 



T AVERY four years a great question arises in 

1^ this country, and all the states and their 

-* — ^ people are disturbed until this question Is 

settled. Even business nearly stops still, for many 

persons can think of nothing but the answer to this 

question. 

Who shall be President? That Is the question 
which at the end of every four years troubles the 
minds of our people. This question was asked 
for the first time In 1789, after the Constitution 
had been made and accepted by the states, but this 
time the people found It a very easy question to 
answer. 

There were several men who had taken a great 
part In the making of our country, and who might 
have been named for President. One of these 
was Thomas Jefferson, who wrote the Declaration 
of Independence. Another of them was Benja- 
min Franklin, who got France to come to our aid, 
and did many other noble things for his country. 
But none of them stood so high In the respect and 
admiration of the people as George Washington, 

170 



END OF A NOBLE LIFE 171 

who had led our armies through the great war, 
and to whom, more than to any other man, we 
owed our Hberty. 

This time, then, there was no real question as 
to who should be President. Washington was the 
man. All men, all parties, settled upon Washing- 
ton. No one opposed him; there was no man in 
the country like him. He was unanimously 
elected the first President of the United States. 

In olden times, when a victorious general came 
back to Rome with the splendid spoils brought 
from distant countries, the people gave him a 
triumph, and all Rome rose to do him honor and 
to gaze upon the splendor of the show. Wash- 
ington had no splendid spoils to display. But he 
had the love of the people, which was far better 
than gold and silver won in war; and all the way 
from his home at Mount Vernon to New York, 
where he was to take the office of President, the 
people honored him with a triumph. 

Along the whole journey, men, women and chil- 
dren crowded the roadside, and waited for hours 
to see him pass. That was before the day of rail- 
roads, and he had to go slowly in his carriage, so 
that everybody had a fine chance to see and greet 
him as he went by. Guns were fired as he passed 
through the towns; arches of triumph were 
erected for his carriage to go under; flowers were 
strewn in the streets for Its wheels to roll over; 



172 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

cheers and cries of greeting filled the air; all that 
the people could do to honor their great hero was 
done. 

On the 30th of April, 1789, Washington took 
the oath of office as the first President of our 
country and people. He stood on the balcony of 
a building in front of Federal Hall, In which Con- 
gress met, and in the street before him was a vast 
multitude, full of joy and hope. When he had 
taken the oath cannon roared out, bells were rung 
in all the neighboring steeples, and a mighty shout 
burst from the assembled multitude : 

'' Long live George Washington, President of 
the United States! " 

This, I have said, was in New York. But Phil- 
adelphia was soon chosen as the seat of govern- 
ment, and the President and Congress moved to 
that city the next year. There they stayed for 
ten years. In the year 1800 a new city, named 
Washington, on the banks of the Potomac, was 
made the capital of our country, and in that city 
Congress has met ever since. 

I must say something here about another of the 
great men of Revolutionary times, Alexander 
Hamilton. He was great in financial or money 
matters, and this was very Important at that time, 
for the money-affairs of the country were In a sad 
state. 

In the Revolution our people had very little 



END OF A NOBLE LIFE 173 

money, and that was one reason why they had so 
much suffering. Congress soon ran out of gold 
and silver, so it issued paper money. This did 
very well for a time, and in the end a great deal 
of paper money was set afloat, but people soon be- 
gan to get afraid of it. There was too much 
money of this kind for so poor a country. The 
value of the Continental currency, as it was called, 
began to go down, and the price of everything else 
to go up. In time the paper money lost almost all 
its value. 

Such was the money the people had at the end 
of the Revolution. It was not good for much, 
was it? But it was the only kind of money Con- 
gress had to pay the soldiers with or to pay the 
other debts of the government. The country 
owed much more money than it could pay, so that 
it was what we call bankrupt. Nobody would 
trust it or take its paper in payment. What Alex- 
ander Hamilton did was to help the country to pay 
its debts and to bring back its lost credit, and in 
doing that he won great honor. 

Hamilton came to this country from the West 
Indies during the Revolution. He was then only 
a boy, but he soon showed himself a good soldier, 
and Washington made him an officer on his staff 
and one of his friends. He often asked young 
Hamilton for advice, and took it, too. 

Hamilton was one of the men who made the 



174 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

Constitution, and when Washington became Presi- 
dent he chose him as his Secretary of the Treas- 
ury. That is, he gave him the money affairs of 
the government to look after. Hamilton was not 
afraid of the load of debt, and he soon took off its 
weight. He asked Congress to pay not only its 
own debt, but that of the states as well, and also 
to make good all the paper money. Congress did 
not like to do this, but Hamilton talked to the 
members till he persuaded them to do so. 

Then he set himself to pay it. He laid a tax 
on whiskey and brandy and on all goods that came 
into the country. He had a mint, which is a build- 
ing where money is coined from metal, and a na- 
tional bank built in Philadelphia. He made the 
debt a government fund or loan, on which he 
agreed to pay interest, and to pay off the principal 
as fast as possible. It was not long before all the 
fund was taken up by those who had money, and 
the country got back its lost credit, for the taxes 
began to bring in much money. 

Washington was President for eight years. 
That made two terms of four years each. Many 
wished to make him President for a third term, 
but he refused to run again. Since then no one 
has been made President for more than two terms. 

George Washington had done enough for his 
country. He loved his home, but he had little 
time to live there. When he was only a boy he 



END OF A NOBLE LIFE 175 

was called away to take part in the French and 
Indian War. Then, after spending some happy 
years at home, he was called away again to lead the 
army in the Revolutionary War. Finally, he 
served his country eight years as President. 

He was now growing old and wanted rest, and 
he went back with joy to his beloved home at 
Mount Vernon, hoping to spend there the re- 
mainder of his days. But trouble arose with 
France, and it looked as if there would be a new 
war, and Washington was asked to take command 
of the army again. He consented, though he had 
had enough of fighting; but fortunately the war 
did not come, so he was not obliged to abandon his 
home. 

He died In December, 1799, near the end of the 
century of which he was one of the greatest men. 
The news of his death filled all American hearts 
with grief. Not while the United States exists 
will the name of Washington be forgotten or left 
without honor. His home and tomb at Mt. 
Vernon are visited each year by thousands of 
patriotic Americans. As was said of him long 
ago by General Henry Lee, he was and is, " first 
in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his 
countrymen." 



CHAPTER XVII 

THE STEAMBOAT AND THE COTTON GIN 

I THINK you must now have learned a great 
deal about the history of your country from 
the time Columbus crossed the ocean till the 
year 1800, the beginning of the Nineteenth cen- 
tury. You have been told about discovery, and 
settlement, and wars, and modes of life, and gov- 
ernment, and other things, but you must bear in 
mind that these are not the whole of history. The 
story of our country is broad and deep enough to 
hold many other things beside these. For in- 
stance, there is the story of our great inventors, 
to whom we owe so much. I propose in this 
chapter to tell you about some of those who lived 
near the year 1800. 

First, I must ask you to go back with me to a 
kitchen in Scotland many years ago. On the open 
hearth of that kitchen a bright fire blazed, and 
near by sat a thoughtful-faced boy, with his eyes 
fixed on the tea-kettle which was boiling away 
over the fire, while Its lid kept lifting to let the 
steam escape. His mother, who was bustling 
about, no doubt thought him Idle, and may have 

176 



STEAMBOAT AND COTTON GIN 177 

scolded him a little. But he was far from idle; 
he was busy at work — not with his hands, but 
with his brain. The brain, you know, may be 
hard at work while the body Is doing nothing. 

How many of you have seen the lid of a kettle 
of boiling water keeping up Its clatter as the steam 
lifts It and puffs out Into the air? And what 
thought has this brought Into your mind? Into 
the mind of little James Watt, the Scotch boy, it 
brought one great thought, that of power. As 
he looked at It, he said to himself that the steam 
which comes from boiling water must have a great 
deal of force, if a little of It could keep the kettle 
lid clattering up and down; and he asked himself 
if such a power could not be put to some good use. 
Our Scotch boy was not the first one to have that 
thought. Others had thought the same thing, 
and steam had been used to move a poor sort of 
engine. But what James Watt did when he grew 
up, was to invent a much better engine than had 
ever been made before. It was a great day for 
us all when that engine was invented. Before 
that time men had done most of the work of the 
world with their hands, and you may Imagine that 
the work went on very slowly. Since that time 
most of the world's work has been done with the 
aid of the steam-engine, and one man can do as 
much as many men could do in the past. You 
have seen the wheels rolling and heard the ma- 



178 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

chines rattling and the hammers clanging in 
our great factories and workshops. And I fancy 
most of you know that back of all these is the fire 
under the boilers and the steam in the engine, the 
mighty magician which sets all these wheels and 
machines at work and changes raw material Into 
so many things of use and beauty. 

Now let us come back to our American Invent- 
ors. I have spoken about the steam engine be- 
cause It was with this that most of them worked. 
They thought that If horses could drag a wagon 
over the ground and the wind could drive a vessel 
through the water, steam might do the same thing, 
and they set themselves to see In what way a car- 
riage or a boat could be moved by a steam engine. 

Very likely you have all heard about Robert 
Fulton and his steamboat, but you may not know 
that steamboats were running on American waters 
years before that of Fulton was built. Why, as 
long ago as 1768, before the Revolutionary War, 
Oliver Evans, one of our first Inventors, had made 
a little boat which was moved by steam and pad- 
dle-wheels. Years afterwards he made a large 
engine for a boat at New Orleans. It was put In 
the boat, but there came a dry season and low 
water, so that the boat could not be used, and the 
owners took the engine out and set It to work on a 
sawmill. It did so well there that it was never 



STEAMBOAT AND COTTON GIN 179 

put back in the boat; so that steamboat never had 
a chance. 

Oliver Evans was the first man to make a steam- 
boat, but there were others who thought they could 
move a boat by steam. Some of these were in 
Europe and some in America. Down in Virginia 
was an inventor named Rumsey who moved a boat 
at the speed of four miles an hour. In this boat 
jets of water were pumped through the stern and 
forced the boat along. In Philadelphia was an- 
other man named John Fitch, who was the first 
man to make a successful steamboat. His boat 
was moved with paddles like an Indian canoe. It 
was put on the Delaware River, between Philadel- 
phia and Trenton in 1790, and ran for several 
months as a passenger boat, at the speed of seven 
or eight miles an hour. Poor John Fitch! He 
was unfortunate and in the end he killed himself. 

I am glad to be able to tell you a different story 
of the next man who tried to make a steamboat. 
His name w^as Robert Fulton. He was born in 
Pennsylvania, and as a boy was very fond of the 
water, he and the other boys having an old flat- 
boat which they pushed along with a pole. Ful- 
ton got tired of this way of getting along, and like 
a natural-born inventor set his wits to work. In 
the end he made two paddle-wheels which hung 
over the sides and could be moved in the water by 



i8o THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

turning a crank and so force the boat onward. 
The boys found this much easier than the pole, 
and likely enough young Fulton thought a large 
vessel might be moved in the same way. 

He knew all about what others had done. He 
had heard how Rumsey moved his boat by pump- 
ing water through the stern, and Fitch by paddling 
it along. And he had seen a boat in Scotland 
moved by a stern paddle-wheel. I fancy he had 
not forgotten the side paddle-wheel he made as a 
boy to go fishing with, for when he set out to in- 
vent his steamboat this is the plan he tried. 

Fulton made his first boat in France, but he had 
bad luck there. Then he came to America and 
built a boat in New York. While he was at work 
on this boat In America, James Watt, of whom I 
have already told you, was building him an en- 
gine In England. He wanted the best engine that 
he could get, and he thought the Scotch Inventor 
was the right man to make It. 

While Fulton was working some of the smart 
New Yorkers were laughing. They called his 
boat " Fulton's Folly," and said It would not move 
faster than the tide would carry It. But he let 
them laugh and worked on, and at last, one day 
In 1807, the new boat, which he named the *' Cler- 
mont," was afloat In the Hudson ready for trial. 
Hundreds of curious people came to see It start. 
Some were ready *to laugh again when they saw the 



STEAMBOAT AND COTTON GIN i8i 

boat, with Its clumsy paddle-wheels hanging down 
in the water on both sides. They were not cov- 
ered with wooden frames as were such wheels 
afterwards. 

'' That boat move? So will a log move if set 
adrift," said the people who thought themselves 
very wise. " It will move when the tide moves It, 
and not before." But none of them felt like 
laughing when they saw the wheels begin to turn 
and the boat to glide out Into the stream, moving 
against the tide. 

" She moves! she moves! " cried the crowd, and 
nobody said a word about " Fulton's Folly." 

Move she did. Up the Hudson she went 
against wind and current, and reached Albany, one 
hundred and forty-two miles away, In thirty-two 
hours. This was at the rate of four and a half 
miles an hour. It was not many years before 
steamboats were running on all our rivers. 

That Is all I shall say here about the steamboat, 
for there Is another story of Invention I wish to 
tell you before I close. This Is about the cotton 
fibre, which you know Is the great product of the 
Southern States. 

The cotton plant when ripe has a white, fluffy 
head, and a great bunch of snow-white fibres, 
within which are the seeds. In old times these 
had to be taken out by hand, and it was a whole 
day's work for a negro to get the seeds out of a 



1 82 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

pound of the cotton. This made cotton so dear 
that not much of it could be sold. In 1784 eight 
bags of it were sent to Liverpool, and the custom- 
house people there seized it for duties. They said 
It must have been smuggled from some other 
country, for the United States could not have pro- 
duced such a " prodigious quantity." 

A few years afterwards a young man named Eli 
Whitney went South to teach in a private family, 
but before he got there some one else had his sit- 
uation, and he was left with nothing to do. Mrs. 
Greene, the widow of General Greene, who 
fought so well in the Revolution, took pity on him 
and gave him a home in her house. He paid her 
by fixing up things about her house. She found 
him so handy that she asked him If he could not 
invent a machine to take the seeds out of the cot- 
ton. Whitney said he would try, and he set him- 
self to work. It was not long before he had a 
machine made which did the work wonderfully 
well. This machine is known as the " cotton- 
gin," or cotton engine, for gin Is short for engine. 
On one side of It are wires so close together that 
the seeds cannot get through. Between them are 
circular saws which catch the cotton and draw it 
through, while the seeds pass on. 

The machine was a simple one, but It acted like 
magic. A hundred negroes could not clean as 
much cotton In a day as one machine. The price 



STEAMBOAT AND COTTON GIN 183 

of cotton soon went down and a demand for it 
sprang up. In 1795, when the cotton gin was 
made, only about 500,000 pounds of cotton were 
produced in this country. By 1801 this had 
grown to 20,000,000 pounds. Now it has grown 
to more than 12,000,000 bales, of nearly 500 
pounds each. This is sold to foreign countries 
and is worked in our own mills at home, being 
made into millions of yards of cloth of many 
kinds to clothe the people of the earth. All this 
comes from the work of Eli Whitney's machine. 
And the seed taken from the cotton is pressed for 
the oil it contains, so that from a year's crop we 
get nearly 150,000,000 gallons of useful oil. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

THE ENGLISH AND AMERICANS FIGHT AGAIN 

FOR years before and after the year 1800 all 
Europe was filled with war and bloodshed. 
Most of my readers must have heard of 
Napoleon Bonaparte, one of the greatest generals 
that ever lived, and one of the most cruel men. 
He was at the head of the armies of France, and 
was fighting all Europe. England was his great- 
est enemy and fought him on land and sea, and 
this fighting on the sea made trouble between Eng- 
land and the United States. 

The English wanted men for their war-vessels 
and said they had a right to take Englishmen 
wherever they could find them. So they began to 
take sailors off of American merchant vessels. 
They said that these men were deserters from the 
British navy, but the fact is that many of them 
were true-born Americans; and our people grew 
very angry as this went on year after year. 

What made it worse was the insolence of some 
of the British captains. One of them went so far 
as to stop an American war-vessel, the " Chesa- 
184 



ENGLISH AND AMERICANS FIGHT 185 

peake," and demand part of her crew, who, he 
said, were British deserters. When Captain Bar- 
ron refused to give them up the British captain 
fired all his guns and killed and wounded numbers 
of the American crew. The " Chesapeake " had 
no guns fit to fire back, so her flag had to be pulled 
down and the men to be given up. 

You may well imagine that this insult made the 
American blood boil. There would have been 
war at that time if the British government had not 
owned that it was wrong and offered to pay for 
the injury. A few years afterwards the insult was 
paid for in a different way. Another proud 
British captain thought he could treat Americans 
In the same saucy fashion. The frigate " Presi- 
dent " met the British sloop-of-war '' Little Belt," 
and hailed it, the captain calling through his 
trumpet, " What ship is that? " 

Instead of giving a civil reply the British cap- 
tain answered with a cannon shot. Then the 
" President " fired a broadside which killed eleven 
and wounded twenty-one men on the " Little 
Belt." When the captain of the '' President " 
hailed again the insolent Briton was glad to reply 
in a more civil fashion. He had been taught a 
useful lesson. 

The United States was then a poor country, and 
not In condition to go to war. But no nation 
could submit to such Insults as these. It is said 



1 86 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

that more than six thousand sailors had been 
taken from our merchant ships, and among these 
were two nephews of General Washington, who 
were seized while they were on their way home 
from Europe, and put to work as common seamen 
on a British war-vessel. 

At length, on June i8, 1812, the United States 
declared war against Great Britain. It had put 
up with insults and injuries as long as it could bear 
them. It did not take long to teach the haughty 
British captains that American sea-dogs were not 
to be played with. The little American fleet put 
to sea, and before the end of the year it had cap- 
tured no less than five of the best ships in the 
British navy and had not lost a single ship in re- 
turn. I fancy the people of England quit sing- 
ing their proud song, " Britannia rules the waves." 

Shall I tell you the whole story of this war? I 
do not think it worth while, for there is much of 
it you would not care to hear. The war went on 
for two years and a half, on sea and land, but there 
were not many important battles, and the United 
States did not win much honor on land. But on 
the sea the sailors of our country covered them- 
selves with glory. 

Most of the land battles were along the borders 
of Canada. Here there was a good deal of fight- 
ing, but most of it was of no great account. At 
first the British had the best of it, and then the 



ENGLISH AND AxMERICANS FIGHT 187 

Americans began to win battles, but It all came to 
an end about where it began. Neither side gained 
anything for the men that were killed. 

There was one naval battle in the north that I 
must tell you about. On Lake Erie the British 
had a fleet of six war-vessels, and for a time they 
had everything their own way. Then Captain 
Oliver Perry, a young officer, was sent to the lake 
to build a fleet and fight the British. 

When he got there the stuff for his ships was 
growing in the woods. He had to cut down trees 
and build ships from their timber. But he worked 
like a young giant, and very soon had some vessels 
built and afloat. He found some also on the lake, 
and in a wonderfully short time he had a fleet on 
the lake and was sailing out to find the British 
warships. 

The fleets met on September 10, 18 13. The 
Americans had the most vessels, but the British had 
the most guns, and soon they were fighting like sea- 
dragons. The " Lawrence," Captain Perry's flag- 
ship, fought two of the largest British ships till it 
was nearly ready to sink, and so many of its crew 
were killed and wounded that it had only eight 
men left fit for fighting. What do you think the 
brave Perry did then? He leaped into a small 
boat and was rowed away, with the American flag 
floating In his hand, though the British ships were 
firing hotly at him. 



1 88 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

When he reached the " Niagara," another of 
his ships, he sprang on board and sailed right 
through the enemy's fleet, firing right and left into 
their shattered vessels. The British soon had 
enough of this, and in fifteen minutes more they 
gave up the fight. 

*' We have met the enemy and they are ours," 
wrote Perry to General Harrison. He was a born 
hero of the waves. 

Now I think we had better take a look out to 
sea and learn what was going on there. We did 
not have many ships, but they were like so many 
bulldogs in a flock of sheep. The whole world 
looked on with surprise to see our little fleet of 
war-vessels making such havoc in the proud Brit- 
ish navy which no country in Europe had ever 
been able to defeat. 

In less than two months after war was declared 
the frigate " Essex " met the British sloop-of-war 
" Alert " and took it in eight minutes, without 
losing a man. The " Essex " was too strong for 
the " Alert," but six days afterwards the " Con- 
stitution " met the " Guerriere," and these vessels 
were nearly the same in size. But in half an hour 
the " Guerriere " was nearly shot to pieces and 
ready to sink, and had lost a hundred of her men. 
The others were hastily taken off, and then down 
went the proud British frigate to the bottom of the 
Gulf of St. Lawrence. 



ENGLISH AND AMERICANS FIGHT 189 

All the Island of Great Britain went into mourn- 
ing when it learned how the Americans had served 
this good ship. There was soon more to mourn 
for. The American sloop " Wasp " captured 
the British sloop " Frolic." The frigate " United 
States " captured the frigate ^' Macedonian." 
The " Constitution " met the " Java " and served 
it the same way as it had done the ^' Guerriere." 
In two hours the '' Java " was a wreck. Soon 
after the sloop " Hornet " met the ship " Pea- 
cock " and handled her so severely that she sank 
while her crew was being taken off. 

Later on the British won two battles at sea, 
and that was all they gained during the whole war. 
On the water the honors stayed with the Ameri- 
cans. 

There was one affair in which the British won 
great dishonor instead of honor. In July, 18 14, a 
strong British fleet sailed up Chesapeake Bay, with 
an army of nearly five thousand men on board. 
These were landed and marched on the city of 
Washington, the capital of the young republic. 

Their coming was a surprise. There were few 
trained soldiers to meet this army, and those were 
not the days of railroads, so that no troops could 
be brought In haste from afar. Those that gath- 
ered were nearly all raw militia, and they did not 
stand long before the British veterans who had 
fought in the wars with Napoleon. They were 



190 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

soon put to flight, and the British army marched 
Into our capital city. 

There they behaved In a way that their country 
has ever since been ashamed of. They set fire to 
the public buildings and burned most of them to 
the ground. The Capitol, the President's house, 
and other buildings were burned, and the records 
of the government were destroyed. Then, having 
acted like so many savages, the British hurried 
away before the Americans could get at them for 
revenge. That was a victory, I fancy, which the 
British do not like to read about. 

They had been so successful at Washington that 
they thought they would try the same thing with 
another city. This time they picked out New Or- 
leans, which was so far away from the thickly set- 
tled part of the country that they fancied It would 
be an easy matter to capture it. In this they made 
a great mistake, as you will soon see. 

There was a general in the South who was not 
used to being defeated. This was Andrew Jack- 
son, one of our bravest soldiers, who had just won 
fame In a war with the Indians of Georgia. He 
was a man who was always ready to fight and 
this the English found when they marched on 
New Orleans. There were twelve thousand of 
them, and Jackson, who had been sent there to 
meet them, only had half that many. And the 
British were trained soldiers, while the Americans 



ENGLISH AND AMERICANS FIGHT 191 

were militia. But most of them were men of the 
backwoods, who knew how to shoot. 

Some of you may have heard that Jackson's men 
fought behind cotton bales. That is not quite 
true, but he was in such a hurry in building his 
breastworks that he did put in them some bales of 
cotton taken from the warehouses. The British, 
who were in as great a hurry, built a breastwork 
of sugar hogsheads which they found on the plan- 
tations. But the cannon balls soon set the cotton 
on fire and filled the air with flying sugar, so the 
bales and the hogsheads had to be pulled out. It 
was found that cotton and sugar, while good 
enough in their place, were not good things to stop 
cannon balls. 

Soon the British marched against the American 
works, and there was a terrible fight. 

" Stand to your guns, my men," said Jackson to 
his soldiers. " Make every shot tell. Give it to 
them." 

Many of the men were old hunters from Ten- 
nessee, some of whom could hit a squirrel in the 
eye, and when they fired the British fell In rows. 
Not a man could cross that terrible wall of fire, 
and they fought on until twenty-six hundred of 
them lay bleeding on the field, while only eight 
Americans were killed. 

That ended the battle. The men were not born 
who could face a fire like that. It ended the war 



192 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

also, and It was the last time Americans and Eng- 
lishmen ever fought each other. Jackson became 
the hero of the country, and he was finally elected 
President of the United States. I cannot say that 
he was well fitted to be President. He was a very 
obstinate man, who always wanted to have his own 
way, and that is better In a soldier than in a Presi- 
dent. But he was one who loved his country, and 
when one of the states of the South sought to 
secede from the Union, Jackson, though he was 
a son of the South himself, quickly gave the se- 
ceders to understand that he was a general as well 
as a President, and that no state should leave the 
ranks of the Union while he marched at its head. 



CHAPTER XIX 

HOW THE VICTIMS OF THE ALAMO WERE 
REVENGED 

I HAVE told you the story of more than one 
war. I shall have to tell you now about still 
another in which the Americans fought the 
Mexicans in Texas. 

I suppose you know that Texas is one of our 
states, and the largest of them all. That is, It is 
largest in square miles; not in number of people. 
In former times it was part of Mexico, and was a 
portion of what Is called Spanish America. But 
there came to be more Americans in It than Span- 
iards. People kept going there from the United 
States until it was much more of an American than 
a Spanish country. 

General Santa Anna, who was at the head of the 
Mexican government at the time I speak of, was 
somewhat of a tyrant, and he tried to rule the peo- 
ple of Texas in a way they would not submit to. 
Then he ordered them to give up all their guns to 
his soldiers, but instead of that they took their guns 
and drove the Mexican soldiers away. After that 
there was war, as you might well suppose, for a 
Mexican army was sent to punish the Texans. 

193 



194 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

I wish now to tell you about what happened to 
some very brave Americans. There were only 
one hundred and seventy-live of them, and they 
were attacked by General Santa Anna with an 
army of several thousand men. But they were 
commanded by Colonel Travis, a brave young 
Texan, and among them was the famous David 
Crockett, a great hunter, and Colonel James 
Bowie, who invented the terrible ** bowie-knife," 
and other bold and daring men who had settled 
in Texas. They had made a fort of an old 
Spanish building called the Alamo. 

The kind of men I have named do not easily 
give up. The Mexicans poured bomb-shells and 
cannon balls into their fort, battering down the 
walls and kilHng many of them, but they fought on 
like tigers, determined to die rather than surren- 
der. At length so many of them were dead that 
there were not enough left to defend the walls, and 
the Mexican soldiers captured the Alamo. The 
valiant Crockett kept on lighting, and when he fell, 
the ground before him was covered with Mexican 
dead. Then Santa Anna ordered his soldiers to 
shoot down all that were left. That is what Is 
called the " Massacre of the Alamo." 

It was not long before the Americans had their 
revenge. Their principal leader was a bold and 
able man named Samuel Houston. He had less 
than eight hundred men under him, but he 



VICTIMS OF THE ALAMO 195 

marched on the Mexicans, who had then about 
eighteen hundred men. 

" Men, there Is the enemy," said brave General 
Houston. "Do you wish to fight?" 

" We do," they all shouted. 

" Charge on them, then, for liberty or death ! 
Remember the Alamo ! " 

" Remember the Alamo ! " they cried, as they 
rushed onward with the courage of lions. 

In a little time the Mexicans were running like 
frightened deer, and the daring Texans were like 
deer hounds on their tracks. Of the eighteen 
hundred Mexicans all but four hundred were 
killed, wounded, or taken prisoners, while the 
Americans lost only thirty men. They had well 
avenged the gallant Travis and the martyrs of the 
Alamo. 

The cruel Santa Anna was taken prisoner. He 
had only one sound leg, and the story was that he 
was caught with his wooden leg stuck fast In the 
mud. Many of the Texans wanted to hang him 
for his murders at the Alamo, but In the end he 
was set free. 

All this took place In 1835. Texas was made 
an Independent country, the " Lone Star Republic," 
with General Houston for President. But Its 
people did not want to stand alone. They were 
American born and wished to belong to the United 
States. So this country was asked to accept Texas 



196 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

as a state of the Union. Nine years after it was 
accepted as one of the American states. 

Perhaps some of my readers may think that this 
story has much more to do with the history of 
Mexico than that of the United States. But the 
taking of Texas as a state was United States his- 
tory, and so was what followed. You know how 
one thing leads to another. Mexico did not feel 
like giving up Texas so easily, and her rulers said 
that the United States had no right to take it. It 
was not long before the soldiers of the two coun- 
tries met on the border lands and blood was shed. 
There was a sharp fight at a place called Palo 
Alto, and a sharper one at a place called Resaca de 
la Palma. In both of them the Mexicans were de- 
feated. 

Congress then declared war against Mexico, 
and very soon there was hard fighting going on 
elsewhere. General Zachary Taylor, a brave 
officer, who had fought the Seminole Indians in 
Florida, led the American troops across the Rio 
Grande River into Mexico, and some time after- 
wards marched to a place called Buena Vista. He 
had only five thousand men, while Santa Anna 
was marching against him with twenty thousand 
— four to one. General Taylor's army was in 
great danger. Santa Anna sent him a message, 
asking him to surrender if he did not want his 
army cut to pieces; but Rough and Ready, as 



VICTIMS OF THE ALAMO 197 

Taylor's men called him, sent word back that he 
was there to fight, not to surrender. 

The battle that followed was a desperate one. 
It took place on February 23, 1847. The Mexi- 
can lancers rode bravely against the American lines 
and were driven back at the cannon's mouth. For 
ten long hours the fighting went on. The Mexi- 
cans gained the high ground above the pass and 
put the American troops in danger. Charge after 
charge was made, but like bulldogs the Yankee 
soldiers held their ground. On came the dashing 
Mexican lancers, shouting their war-cry of " God 
and Liberty," and charging a battery commanded 
by Captain Bragg. The lancers captured some of 
the guns and drove the soldiers back. Captain 
Bragg sent a messenger in haste to General Tay- 
lor, saying that he must have more men or he 
could not hold his ground. 

" I have no more men to send you," said 
Rough and Ready. " Give them a little more 
grape. Captain Bragg." 

The cannon were loaded with grape-shot and 
fired into the ranks of the enemy, cutting great 
gaps through them. Again and again they were 
loaded and fired, and then the fine Mexican cavalry 
turned and fled. They could not stand any more 
of Captain Bragg's grape. 

That night both armies went to sleep on the 
field of battle. But when the next day dawned the 



1 98 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

Mexicans were gone. Santa Anna had led them 
a\yay during the night and General Taylor had 
won the greatest victory of the war. He received 
a noble reward for it, for the following year he 
was elected President of the United States. 

The next thing done in this war was an attempt 
to capture the city of Mexico, the capital of the 
country. The easiest way to get there was by sea, 
for it was a long journey by land, so a fleet was got 
ready and an army sent south on the Gulf of Mex- 
ico. This army was led by General Winfield 
Scott, who had fought against the British in the 
War of 1 8 12. 

Onward they sailed till they came before the 
seaport city of Vera Cruz. This had a strong 
fort, which was battered for four days by the 
American cannon, when its walls were so shattered 
that the Mexicans gave it up. In this way a good 
starting-point was gained. 

But I would have you all know that the Ameri- 
cans had no easy road before them. The city of 
Mexico lies in the center of the country on land 
that is as high as many mountains, and the way to 
it from the coast goes steadily upward, and has 
many difficult passes and rough places, where a 
small force might stop an army. 

If the Mexicans had known their business and 
had possessed good generals I am afraid the 
Americans might never have gotten up this rugged 




The Storming of Chapultepec. 



VICTIMS OF THE ALAMO 199 

road. The Mexicans had men enough but they 
wanted able leaders. At one of the passes, named 
Cerro Gordo, Santa Anna waited with 15,000 
men.^ The Americans had only 9,000. It looked 
as if they might have to turn back. 

What did they do? Why, they managed to 
drag a battery to the top of a steep hill that over- 
looked the pass. And while these guns poured 
their shot down on the astonished Mexicans the 
army attacked them in front. In a few hours 
they were in full flight. Five generals, and 3,000 
men were taken prisoners, and Santa Anna himself 
came so near being taken that he left his cork leg 
behind. Do you not think a general ought to 
have two good legs when he has to run as often as 
Santa Anna had? 

Onward they marched until not very far away 
lay the beautiful city of Mexico. But here and 
there along the road were strong forts, and Santa 
Anna had collected a large army, three times as 
large as that of the Americans. You may see that 
General Scott had a very hard task before him. 
But there is one way to get past forts without fight- 
ing; which is, to go around them. This is what 
General Scott did. He marched to the south, and 
soon he was within ten miles of the capital without 
a battle. 

August 20th was a great day for the American 
army. That day our brave troops fought like 



200 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

heroes, and before night they had won five vic- 
tories. One of these was on a steep hill called 
Churubusco, which they charged up In the face of 
the Mexican guns. Then on they went, and^ In a 
short time the old city, the most ancient In 
America, was In their hands. That ended the 
war. When peace was made the United States 
claimed the provinces of New Mexico and Cali- 
fornia, which had been captured by our soldiers, 
but for which Mexico was paid a large sum. No 
one then dreamed how rich the provinces were in 
silver and gold. Not long after the gold of Cali- 
fornia was discovered, and that country, which 
had been feebly held by a few Mexicans, was 
quickly filled by an army of gold-seekers. Since 
then it has proved one of the richest parts of the 
earth. 



CHAPTER XX 

HOW SLAVERY LED TO WAR 

ALL of my young readers must know what a 
wonderful age this Is that we live in, and 
what marvelous things have been done. 
Some of you, no doubt, have read the stories of 
magic In the " Arabian Nights Entertainments," 
and thought them very odd, if not absurd. But 
If any one, a hundred years ago, had been told 
about the railroad, the telegraph, the photograph, 
the phonograph, vessels that run beneath the sur- 
face of the water, and ships that sail In the air, 
I fancy they would have called all this nonsense 
and " Arabian Nights " magic. Why, think of it, 
a trolley car Is as magical. In its way, as Aladdin's 
wonderful lamp. 

But while you know much about these things, 
there has been one great step of progress which, 
I fancy, you know or think very little about. I 
do not mean material but moral progress, for you 
must bear In mind that while the world has been 
growing richer it has also been growing better. 

A hundred years ago many millions of men 
were held as slaves In America and Europe. 

201 



202 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

Some of these were black and some were white, 
but they could be bought and sold like so many 
cattle, could be whipped by their masters, and had 
no more rights than so many brute beasts. 

To-day there is not a slave in Europe or 
America. All these millions of slaves have been 
set free. Do you not think I am right in saying 
that the world has grown better as well as 
richer? Why, fifty years ago there were mil- 
lions of slaves in our own country, and now there 
is not one in all the land. Is not that a great 
gain to mankind? But it is sad to think that 
this slavery gave rise to a terrible war. I shall 
have to tell you about this war, after I have told 
you how slavery brought it on. 

In the early part of this book you read of 
how white men first came to this country. I have 
now to tell you that black men were brought here 
almost as soon. In 1619, just twelve years after 
Captain John Smith and the English colonists 
landed at Jamestown, a Dutch ship sailed up the 
James River and sold them some negroes to be 
held as slaves. 

You remember about Pocahontas, the Indian 
girl who saved the life of Captain John Smith. 
She was afterwards married to John Rolfe, the 
man who first planted tobacco in Virginia. John 
Rolfe wrote down what was going on in Virginia, 
and it was he who told us about these negroes 



HOW SLAVERY LED TO WAR 203 

brought in as slaves. This is what he wrote: 

" About the last of August came in, a Dutch 
marine-of-war, that sold us 20 Negars." 

These twenty " Negars," as he called them, 
grew in numbers until there were four million 
negro slaves in our country in i860, when the 
war began. There are twice that many black peo- 
ple in the country to-day, but I am glad to be 
able to say that none of them are slaves. Yet 
how sad it is to think that it cost the lives of 
hundreds of thousands of men, and misery to mul- 
titudes of families, to set them free. 

" Where did all these black men come from? " 
I am sure I hear some young voice asking that 
question. Well, they came from Africa, the land 
of the negroes. In our time merchant ships are 
used to carry goods from one country to another. 
In old times many of these ships were used in 
carrying negroes to be sold as slaves. The 
wicked captains would steal the poor black men 
in Africa, or buy them from the chiefs, who had 
taken them prisoners in war. Some of them filled 
their ships so full of these miserable victims that 
hundreds of them died and were thrown over- 
board. Then, when they got to the West Indies 
or to the shores of our country, they would sell 
all that were left alive to the planters, to spend 
the rest of their lives like oxen chained to the yoke. 

It was a very sad and cruel business, but peo- 



204 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

pie then thought it right, and some of the best 
men took part in it. That is why I say the world 
has grown better. We have a higher idea of 
right and wrong in regard to such things than our 
forefathers had. 

Slaves were kept in all parts of the country, in 
the North as well as the South. There were more 
of them in the South than in the North, for they 
were of more use there as workers in the tobacco 
and rice and cotton fields. Most of those in the 
North were kept as house servants. Not many 
of them were needed in the fields. 

The North had not much use for slaves, and in 
time laws were passed, doing away with slavery in 
all the Northern states. Very likely the same 
thing would have taken place in the South if it 
had not been for the discovery of the cotton-gin. 
I have told you what a change this great invention 
made. Before that time it did not pay to raise 
cotton in our fields. After that time cotton grew 
to be a very profitable crop, and the cultivation 
of it spread wider and wider until it was planted 
over a great part of the South. 

This made a remarkable change. Negroes 
were very useful in the cotton fields, and no one 
in the South now thought of doing away with 
slavery. After 1808 no ships could bring slaves 
to this country, but there were a great many here 
then, and many others were afterwards born and 



HOW SLAVERY LED TO WAR 205 

grew up as slaves, so that the numbers kept in- 
creasing year after year. 

There were always some people, both in the 
North and the South, who did not like slavery. 
Among them were Franklin and Washington and 
Jefferson and other great men. In time there got 
to be so many of these people in the North that 
they formed what were called Anti-slavery So- 
cieties. Some of them said that slavery should 
be kept where it was and not taken into any new 
states. Others said that every slave in the United 
States ought to be set free. 

This brought on great excitement all over the 
country. The people in the North who believed 
in slavery were often violent. Now and then 
there were riots. Buildings where Anti-slavery 
meetings were held were burned down. One of 
the leaders of the Abolitionists, as the Anti- 
slavery people were called, was dragged through 
the streets of Boston with a rope tied round his 
body, and would have been hanged if his friends 
had not got him away. 

But as time went on the Abolitionists grew 
stronger in the North. Many slaves ran away 
from their masters, and these were hidden by 
their white friends until they could get to Canada, 
where they were safe. All through the South 
and North people were excited. 

I do not think many of our people expected the 



2o6 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

cruel war that was coming. If they had they 
might have been more careful what they said and 
did. But for all that, war was close at hand, and 
two things helped to bring It on. 

There had been fighting In Kansas, one of the 
territories that was to be made into a state, and 
among the fighters was an old man named John 
Brown, who thought that God had called him to 
do all he could for the freedom of the slaves. 

Some people think that John Brown was not 
quite right In his brain. What he did was to 
gather a body of men and to take possession of 
Harper's Ferry, on the Potomac River, where 
there was a government army. He thought that 
the slaves of Virginia would come to his aid In 
multitudes and that he could start a slave war that 
would run all through the South. 

It was a wild project. Not a slave came. But 
some troops came under Colonel Robert E. Lee, 
and Brown and his party were forced to sur- 
render. Some of them were killed and wounded 
and the others taken prisoners. John Brown and 
six others were tried and hanged. But the half- 
insane old man had done his w^ork. That fight 
at Harper's Ferry helped greatly to bring on the 
war. 

I said there were two things. The other was 
the election of Abraham Lincoln as President. 

For a long-time, as I have told you, the Aboli- 



HOW SLAVERY LED TO WAR 207 

tionlsts, or people opposed to slavery, were few 
in number. When they grew more numerous 
they formed a political party, known as the Anti- 
slavery Party. In 1856 a new party, called the 
Republican Party, was formed and took in all the 
Abolitionists. It was so strong that in the election 
of that year eleven states voted for its candidate, 
John C. Fremont, the man who had taken Cali- 
fornia from Mexico. 

In i860 Abraham Lincoln, a western orator 
of whom I shall soon tell you more, was the candi- 
date of the Republican Party, and in the election 
of that year this new party was successful and 
Lincoln was elected President of the United States. 



CHAPTER XXI 

HOW LINCOLN BECAME PRESIDENT 

I SHOULD like to tell you all about one of 
the greatest and noblest men who ever lived 
In our country, and give you his story from 
the time he was born until the time he died. But 
that would be biography, and this Is a book of 
history. Biography Is the story of a man; history 
is the story of a nation. So I cannot give you 
the whole life of Abraham Lincoln, but only that 
part of It which has to do with the history of our 
country.- 

Nations, you should know, are divided Into 
monarchies and republics. In a monarchy the 
ruler is called a king, or some other name which 
means the same thing. And when a king dies 
his son takes his place as king. The king may 
be noble and wise, or he may be base and foolish; 
he may be a genius, or he may be an idiot, with- 
out any sense at all; he may be kind and just, or 
he may be cruel and unjust; but for all that he 
Is king. There may be some good points In letting 
a man be born king, but you can see that there are 
many bad ones. The history of the nations has 
208 



LINCOLN BECOMES PRESIDENT 209 

often shown this, as you may have seen In what 
we have said of some of the English kings who 
had to do with America. 

In a republic the ruler — who Is called presi- 
dent Instead of king — Is not born to his office, 
but Is chosen by the people; and he cannot rule 
the nation all his life,, but only for a few years. 
In that way the best and wisest man In the na- 
tion may be chosen as Its ruler. We do not al- 
ways get the best man In the United States; but 
that Is the fault of the people. It Is not the fault 
of the plan. There Is one thing sure, we never 
get a fool or an Idiot, as kingdoms sometimes do. 

There are times when we do choose our best 
and wisest man, and everybody thinks we did so 
when we made Abraham Lincoln President. As 
I have told you, as soon as he was made President 
a great war began between the two halves of our 
people. It Is not so easy to rule In war as In 
peace, and I must say that poor Lincoln had a 
very hard time of It. But he did the best he 
could, and people say now that no man In our na- 
tion could have done better. Abraham Lincoln 
stands next to George Washington among the 
great and noble men of America. 

There Is one more thing It Is well to know. It 
Is not only the rich and proud that we choose to 
be our Presidents. Many of them have begun life 
as poor boys, and none of them began poorer 



210 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

than " honest Abe Lincoln," as the people he lived 
among called him. He well deserved this name, 
for he was always good and honest. 

No doubt there are many poor boys among my 
readers, but I do not believe that any of you are 
as poor as was little Abe Lincoln, or have had as 
hard a life. So you see that while a king must 
have a king or great noble for father, a President 
may be the son of the poorest laborer. Any one 
of my young readers, if he can bring himself 
strongly to the notice of the people, may become 
President, and I should not wonder at all if some 
one among you should do so in future times. 

I told you that I would not speak about Abra- 
ham Lincoln's early life, but I see that I shall 
have to do so. He was born in a mean little log- 
cabin in the back woods a hundred years ago, in 
the year 1809. His father could not read and 
did not like to work, and the poor little fellow 
had hardly enough to eat. 

His mother loved him, but she could do little 
for him, and she died when he was only eight 
years old. Then his father married a second wife. 
She was a good woman, and she did all she could 
for the poor, forlorn little boy. But it did not 
look much then as if this ragged and hungry little 
chap would become President of the United 
States. 

There was one good thing about little Abe, he 



LINCOLN BECOMES PRESIDENT 211 

had a great love for books. He went to school 
only long enough to learn to read and write, but 
he borrowed and read all the books he could get. 
When he found he could not go to school he 
studied at home. He had no slate or pencil, so 
he studied arithmetic by the light of the kitchen 
fire, working out the problems on the back of a 
wooden fire shovel. When this was full he would 
scrape it off smooth and begin again. In this way 
the boy got to be the best scholar in all the coun- 
try around him. How many of you would have 
worked as hard as he did to get an education? 
Yet it was this kind of work that made him 
President. 

Lincoln knew how to make use of his learning. 
He was always a good talker, and he grew to be 
one of the best public speakers of his times. He 
became so v/ell known and so well respected that 
at length he was sent to Congress. Lincoln did 
not believe that slavery was a good thing for the 
country, and was sure it was a wrong thing in 
itself. So he joined the Republican Party, which 
had just been formed. 

There was another fine speaker in Illinois named 
Douglas, who had different ideas about slavery 
from Lincoln and was a member of the Demo- 
cratic Party. Lincoln and Douglas went about 
Illinois making speeches to the people, and great 
crowds came to hear them, for they were two of 



212 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

the best speakers In the country. Everywhere 
people were talking about Lincoln and Douglas 
and saying what able men they were. 

In i860 came the time when a new President 
was to be chosen, and out of all the political 
leaders of the country these two men from far- 
west Illinois were selected — Douglas by those 
who were In favor of slavery and Lincoln by those 
who opposed slavery. When election day came 
round and the votes were counted, Abraham Lin- 
coln, the rail splitter, was found to be elected Pres- 
ident of the United States. 

The people of the South were In a terrible state 
of mind when they found that a Republican, a 
man opposed to slavery, was elected President. 
They could not tell what would take place. The 
Abolitionists who were against slavery were In 
power and might pass laws that would rob them 
of all their slaves. For years they had been fight- 
ing the North In Congress — fighting by words, 
I mean. Now they determined to leave the 
Union, and to fight with swords and guns If the 
North would not let them go in peace. One by 
one the Southern States passed resolutions to go 
out of the Union. And on all sides they col- 
lected powder and balls and other implements of 
,war, for their leaders felt sure they would have 
to fight. But Lincoln hoped the states would not 
quarrel. He begged them not to. But If they 



LINCOLN BECOMES PRESIDENT 213 

did it was his duty to do what the people had put 
him there for. He had been elected President of 
the United States, and he must do all he could to 
keep these states united. 

It was on the 4th of March, 1861, that Abra- 
ham Lincoln became President. By the middle 
of April the North and South were at war. Both 
sides had their soldiers in the field and fighting 
had begun. The South wanted to take Washing- 
ton, and the North to keep it, and soon a fierce 
battle was fought at a place called Bull Run, a 
few miles south of Washington. 

The Southern States formed a Union of their 
own, which was called the Southern Confederacy. 
They chose Richmond, the capital of Virginia, for 
the capital of the Confederacy, and chose Jef- 
ferson Davis for their President. Davis had 
fought bravely as a soldier at the battle of Buena 
Vista, in Mexico. And he had been long in Con- 
gress, where he showed himself an able law- 
maker. So the South chose him as their best man 
for President. 

The war was half over before President Lin- 
coln did anything about slavery. He was there 
to save the Union, not to free the slaves. But 
the time came when he found that freeing the 
slaves would help him in saving the Union. 
When this time came — it was on the ist of Janu- 
ary, 1863 — he declared that all the slaves should 



214 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

be free. It was a great thing for this country, 
for it was clear that there could be no peace while 
slavery remained. 

But the war went on more fiercely than ever, 
and it was not until April, 1865, that it came to 
an end. The South was not able to fight any 
longer and had to give up, and the Union was 
saved. It was saved without slavery, which was 
a very good thing for both North and South, as 
we have since found out. 

But good and true Abraham Lincoln did not 
live to learn what the country gained by the war, 
for just after it ended he was killed by a wicked 
and foolish man, who thought he would avenge 
the South by shooting the President. 

It was a terrible deed. The whole country 
mourned for its noblest man, slain in the hour of 
victory. The South as well as the North suffered 
by his death, for he was too just a man to oppress 
those who had been beaten in war, and in him all 
the people, North and South, lost their best and 
ablest friend. 



CHAPTER XXII 

THE GREAT CIVIL WAR 

I HAVE no doubt that some of the young 
folks who read this book will want to hear 
the story of the great war that was spoken 
of in the last chapter. Some of the boys will, at 
any rate. The girls do not care so much about 
war, and I am glad of this, for I think the world 
would be much better off if there were no wars. 

Well, I suppose I shall have to tell the boys 
something about it. The girls can skip it, if they 
wish. To tell the whole story of our Civil War 
would take a book five times as large as this, so 
all I can do is to draw a sort of outline map of 
it. A civil war, you should know, means a war 
within a nation, where part of a people fight 
against the other part. A war between two na- 
tions is called a foreign war. 

When our Civil War broke out we had thirty- 
three states — we have more than forty-five to- 
day. Eleven of these states tried to leave the 
Union and twenty-two remained, so that the Union 
states were two to one against the non-Union. 
But the Union states had more than twice the 

215 



2i6 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

people and had ten times the wealth, so that, as 
you may see, the war was a one-sided affair. It 
was nearly all fought in the South, whose people 
suffered greatly for their attempt to leave the 
Union. Many of them lost all they had and be- 
came very poor. 

There were three fields or regions in which this 
war took place. One of these was a narrow re- 
gion, lying between Washington and Richmond, 
the two capital cities. But small as it was, here 
the greatest battles were fought. Both sides were 
fighting fiercely to save their capitals. 

The second region of the war was in the West. 
This was a vast region, extending from Kentucky 
and Missouri down to the Gulf of Mexico. Here 
there were many long, weary marches and much 
hard fighting and great loss of life. The third 
region was on the ocean and rivers, where iron- 
clad ships first met in battle, and where some 
famous combats took place. 

Over these three regions a million and more of 
men struggled for years, fighting with rifle and 
cannon, with sword and bayonet, killing and 
wounding one another and causing no end of mis- 
ery in all parts of the land. For the people at 
home suffered as much as the men on the battle- 
field, and many mothers and sisters were heart- 
broken when word came to them that their dear 
sons or brothers had been shot down on the field 



THE GREAT CIVIL WAR 217 

of blood. War is the most terrible thing upon 
the earth, though men try to make it look like a 
pleasant show with their banners and trumpets 
and drums. 

As soon as the news of the war came there was 
a great coming and going of soldiers, and beat- 
ing of drums, and fluttering of banners, and mak- 
ing of speeches, and thousands marched away, 
some to Washington and some to Richmond, and 
many more to the strongholds of the West. 
Mothers wept as they bade good-by to their sons, 
whom they might never see again. And many 
of the soldier-boys had sad hearts under their 
brave faces. Soon hundreds of these poor fel- 
lows were falling dead and wounded on fields of 
battle, and then their people at home had good 
reason to weep and mourn. 

I have told you about the battle of Bull Run, 
south of Washington, the first great battle of the 
war. Here the Southern army gained the victory, 
and the people of the South were full of joy. But 
Congress now called for half a million of men 
and voted half a billion of dollars. Both sides 
saw that they had a great war before them. 

Bull Run was the only severe battle in 1861, 
but in 1862 both the North and the South had 
large armies, and there was much hard fighting 
in the East and the West. 

I must tell you first of the fighting in Virgnia. 



2i8 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

General George B. McClellan was In command 
of the Union army there. He led it down close 
to Richmond, which he hoped to capture. There 
was a sharp fight at a place called Fair Oaks, 
where General Joseph Johnston, the Confederate 
general, was wounded. General Robert E. Lee 
took his place. They could not have picked out 
a better man, for he proved himself to be one of 
the greatest soldiers of modern times. 

The Confederates had another line general 
named Thomas J. Jackson. He was called 
'' Stonewall " Jackson, because, in the battle of 
Bull Run, some one had said: 

" Look at Jackson ! There he stands like a 
stone wall! " 

General Lee and Stonewall Jackson were not 
the men to keep quiet. In a short time they drove 
McClellan back after a hard fight lasting a whole 
week, and then made a sudden march to the north. 
Here was another Union army, on the old battle- 
field of Bull Run. A dreadful battle followed; 
men fell by thousands ; in the end the Union army 
was defeated and forced back towards Washing- 
ton. 

General Lee knew that he could not take Wash- 
ington, so he marched away north, waded his men 
across the Potomac River, and entered the state of 
Maryland. This was a slave state, and he hoped 
many of the people would join his army. But 



THE GREAT CIVIL WAR 219 

the farmers of Maryland loved the Union too well 
for that, so General Lee got very few of them 
in^hls ranks. 

Then he went west, followed by General Mc- 
Clellan, and at a place called Antietam the two 
armies met; and there was fought the bloodiest 
battle of the war. They kept at it all day long 
and neither side seemed beaten. But that night 
General Lee and his men waded back across the 
Potomac into Virginia, leaving McClellan master 
of the field. There was one more terrible bat- 
tle in Virginia that year, in which General Burn- 
side, who after McClellan commanded the Union 
army, tried to take the city of Fredericksburg, 
but was defeated and his men driven back with 
a dreadful loss of life. 

Both armies now rested until the spring of 1863, 
and then another desperate battle was fought. 
General Hooker had taken General Burnside's 
place, and thought he also must fight a battle, but 
he did not dare to try Fredericksburg as Burnside 
had done, so he marched up the river and crossed 
it into a rough and wild country known as the 
Wil'derness. 

General Lee hurried there to meet him and the 
two armies came together at a place called Chan- 
cellorsville. They fought in the wild woods, 
where the trees in some places were so thick that 
the men could not see one another. But Stone- 



220 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

wall Jackson marched to the left through the 
woods and made a sudden attack on the right wing 
of the Union army. 

This part of the army was taken by surprise 
and driven back. Hooker's men fought all that 
day and the next, but they could not recover from 
their surprise and loss, and in the end they had 
to cross the river back again. General Lee had 
won another great victory. But Stonewall Jack- 
son was wounded and soon died, and Lee would 
rather have lost the battle than to lose this famous 
general. 

Do you not think the North had a right to feel 
very much out of heart by this time? The war 
had gone on for two years, and the Union army 
had been defeated in all the great battles fought 
in Virginia. The only victory won was that at 
Antietam in Maryland. They had been beaten 
at the two battles of Bull Run, the seven days' 
fight at Richmond, and the battles of Fredericks- 
burg and Chancellorsville, while the battle of An- 
tietam had been won with great loss of life. 

But there was soon to be a victory that would 
make up for more than one defeat. Shortly after 
the fight at Chancellorsville General Lee broke 
camp and marched north with the greatest speed. 
The Union army followed as fast as they could 
march, for there was danger of Baltimore or even 
Philadelphia being taken. Both armies kept on 



THE GREAT CIVIL WAR 221 

until they reached the town of Gettysburg, In the 
south of Pennsylvania. Here was fought the 
greatest battle of the war. It lasted for three 
days, the ist, 2d and 3d of July, 1863. 

The loss of life on both sides was dreadful. 
But the Confederates lost the most men and lost 
the battle besides. They tried In vain to break 
through the Union lines, and In the end they were 
forced to retreat. On the 4th of July General 
Lee sadly began his backward march, and the 
telegraph wires carried all through the North the 
tidings of a great victory. This was the turning 
point in the war. Six months before, President 
Lincoln had proclaimed the freedom of the slaves, 
and the armies were now fighting to make his word 
good. Negroes after this were taken Into the 
Union ranks, that they might help In the fight for 
their own liberty. 

I wish to say just here that the people of the 
North bore the defeats in Virginia better than 
you would think. They had good reason to, for 
while they had been losing battles In the East they 
had been winning battles In the West. So one 
helped to make up for the other. If you will fol- 
low me now to the West we will see what was 
taking place there. 

The North did not have to change its generals 
as often In the West as in the East, for it soon 
found a good one ; and it was wise enough to hold 



222 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

on to him. This was General Ulysses S. Grant, 
who Is now honored as one of the greatest generals 
of the world's history. 

Grant was only a captain at first. Then he was 
made a colonel, and was soon raised to the rank 
of general. He met the Confederates first at 
Belmont, Missouri. Here he was defeated, and 
had to take his men aboard river-boats to get 
them away. That was his first and nearly his last 
defeat. 

The Confederates had built two strong forts In 
Kentucky which they named Fort Henry and Fort 
Donelson. General Grant marched against them 
with an army and Commodore Foote steamed 
against them with a fleet of Iron-clad steamboats. 
Fort Henry was taken by the fleet before Grant 
could get to It. Then he marched across country 
to Fort Donelson, on the Cumberland River. He 
attacked this fort so fiercely that the Confederates 
tried to get out of It but did not succeed. Then 
they proposed to surrender, and asked him what 
terms he would give them. 

" No terms except an Immediate and uncondi- 
tional surrender," he said. " I propose to move 
immediately on your works." 

This settled the matter. They surrendered — 
fifteen thousand in all. After that many said that 
U. S. Grant stood for " Unconditional Surrender " 
Grant. 



THE GREAT CIVIL WAR 223 

I cannot tell you about all the fights that took 
place In the West, but there was a terrible battle 
at a place called Pittsburg Landing, which lasted 
two days, and in which Grant came very near be- 
ing defeated. There was a severe one at Mur- 
freesboro on the last day of the year, and another 
three days afterwards. Grant was not there, but 
Bragg, the Confederate General, was defeated. 

The Confederates had an important stronghold 
on the Mississippi River at the city of VIcksburg, 
where they had many forts and a large number 
of cannon. General Sherman tried to capture 
these forts but was driven back. Then General 
Grant tried it and found It a very hard task. 

The country was all swamp and creeks which no 
army could get through, so Grant at last marched 
south on the other side of the river, and then 
crossed over and marched north again. He had 
to fight every step of his way, and to live on the 
food his men could carry, for he had cut loose 
from the North. But he soon reached the city 
and began a long siege. The Confederates held 
out until all their food was gone, and until they 
had eaten up nearly all their horses and mules. 
Then they surrendered. Twenty-seven thousand 
men were taken prisoners. 

This took place on the 4th of July, 1863, the 
same day that General Lee marched away from 
the field at Gettysburg. That was one of the 



224 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

greatest Fourths of July this country had ever 
seen, for with it the last chance of the South was 
lost. General Lee had lost many thousands of his 
hardy veterans, men whom he could never replace. 
And In the fighting around VIcksburg and the 
capture of that city nearly fifty thousand more fell 
on the battle-field or were taken prisoners. It was 
a loss which the leaders of the Southern army bit- 
terly felt. Fighting kept on for two years more, 
but they would have been wiser to give up then and 
save all the death and misery that came to them 
afterwards. 



CHAPTER XXIII 

WAR ON SEA AND LAND 

I HAVE told you part of the story of how 
our people fought on land. Now suppose 
we take a look at the water, and see how 
they fought there. Have any of you heard of 
the wonderful battle between the " Monitor " and 
the " Merrlmac "? If you have you will be sure 
to remember it, for it Is one of the strangest 
stories In the history of war. In the lower part 
of Chesapeake Bay is what I may call a pocket of 
water named Hampton Roads, . into which the 
James River flows. Here, in the month of 
March, 1862, lay a fleet of war-vessels. These 
were not the kind of ships-of-war which we see 
now-a-days. They were wooden vessels, such as 
were used In former wars, but which would be of 
no more use than floating logs against the sea- 
monsters of to-day. 

Something strange was soon to happen to these 
proud ships. On the 8th of March there came 
into the waters of the bay a very odd looking 
craft. It was a ship, but instead of a deck It had 
a sloping roof made of Iron bars. It looked 

225 



226 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

something like a house gone adrift. I fancy the 
people In the wooden ships must have been a little 
scared when they saw it coming, for they had 
never seen a war-vessel with an Iron roof before. 

They might well be scared, for they soon found 
that their cannon were of no more use than pea- 
shooters against this queer craft. The cannon- 
balls bounded off from her sides like so many peas. 
On came the monster and struck one of the ships 
with her Iron beak, tearing a great hole In Its 
side. Down Into the waters sunk the gallant ship, 
with all on board. And there It lay with Its flag 
flying like a flag above a grave. Another ship, 
the " Congress," was driven on the mud and had 
to give up the fight. 

There were three more ships in the fleet, but it 
was now near night, and so the " Merrlmac," as 
the Iron monster was called, steamed away. Her 
captain thought It would be an easy thing to set- 
tle with them the next morning, and very likely 
the people on them did not sleep well that night, 
for they could not forget what had happened to 
the '' Congress " and the " Cumberland," and felt 
sure their turn was to come next. 

But, as the old saying goes, *' There Is many a 
slip between cup and lip." The " Merrlmac " 
was to learn the truth of this. For when she 
came grimly out the next day, expecting to sink 
the rest of the 'fleet and then steam up to the city 



WAR ON SEA AND LAND 227 

of Washington and perhaps burn that, her cap- 
tain found before him the queerest thing in the 
shape of a ship he had ever seen. It was an Iron 
vessel that looked like " a cheese box on a raft." 
All that could be seen was a flat deck that came 
just above the water, and above this a round tower 
of iron, out of which peeped two monsters of 
cannon. 

This strange vessel had come Into Hampton 
Roads during the night, and there it lay ready 
to do battle for the Union. It was a new style 
of war-ship that had been built in New York and 
was called the *' Monitor." 

The " Merrimac " soon had enough to keep 
herself busy, and was forced to let the wooden 
fleet alone. For four long hours these two iron 
monsters battered each other with cannon balls. 
Such a fight had never been seen before. It was 
the first time two ironclad ships had met In war. 

I cannot say that either ship was hurt much. 
The balls could not get through the Iron bars and 
plates and glanced off into the water. But the 
" Merrimac " got the worst of It, and In the end 
she turned and hurried back to Norfolk, from 
which place she had come. The " Monitor " 
waited for her, but she never came out again. 
Soon afterwards the Confederates left Norfolk 
and sunk their Iron ship, and that was the last of 
the " Merrimac." 



228 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

When the news of this wonderful sea-fight got 
to Europe the kings and ministers of war read 
it with alarm. They saw they had something to 
do. Their wooden war-vessels were out of date, 
and they went to work in a hurry to build iron- 
clad ships. To-day all the great nations of the 
earth have fleets of steel-covered ships-of-war, and 
the United States has some of the best and strong- 
est of this kind of ships. 

All through the war there were battles of iron- 
clads. On the western rivers steamboats were 
plated with iron and attacked the forts on shore. 
And along the coast iron-clad vessels helped the 
wooden ships to blockade the ports of the South. 
More vessels like the " Monitor " were built in 
the North, and a number somewhat like the " Mer- 
rimac " were built in the South. I cannot say that 
any of them did much good either North or 
South. 

A great naval battle was fought in the Missis- 
sippi, which led to the capture of New Orleans, and 
another was fought in the Bay of Mobile, on the 
Gulf of Mexico. Here there were some strong 
forts and a powerful iron-clad ship. Admiral 
Farragut sailed into the bay with a fleet of wooden 
ships and several iron vessels like the '^ Monitor," 
When he went past the forts he stood in the rig- 
ging of his ship, with his spy-glass in his hand. 
He. did not seem to care anything for cannon- 



WAR ON SEA AND LAND 229 

balls. He took the forts, and since then Farragut 
has been one of our great naval heroes. 

There was one Confederate privateer, the " Al- 
abama," which caused terrible loss to the mer- 
chants of the North. It took in all sixty-five ves- 
sels, which were set on fire and burned. In June, 
1864, the *' Alabama " was met near the coast of 
France by the frigate ^' Kearsarge," and a furious 
battle took place. For two hours they fought, 
and then the ^' Alabama " sagged down into the 
water and sank to the bottom of the sea. She 
had done much harm to the North, but her career 
was at an end. 

Now let us turn back to the war on land and 
see what was going on there. I have told you the 
story of the fighting up to the great 4th of July, 
1863, when Vicksburg surrendered to General 
Grant and General Lee marched away from Get- 
tysburg. That is where we dropped the threads 
which we have now to take up again. 

After Grant had taken Vicksburg and opened 
the Mississippi from St. Louis to its mouth, he 
set out for the town of Chattanooga, which is m 
Tennessee just north of Georgia. Here there had 
been a great battle in which the Confederate army 
won the victory, and the Union troops were shut 
up in Chattanooga with very little to eat. 

Grant was not there long before there came a 
change. General Bragg, the Confederate com- 



230 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

mander, had his army on the summits of two 
mountains named Lookout Mountain and Mis- 
sionary Ridge. These were defended by strong 
forts. But the Union troops charged up the 
mountain sides in the face of the fire of rifles and 
cannon and soon had possession of the forts. 
General Bragg's army was defeated with great 
loss. This was one of the most brilliant victories 
of the war. The battle of Lookout Mountain has 
been called " the battle above the clouds.'* 

Everybody now saw that General Grant was 
much the best general on the Union side, and 
President Lincoln made him commander-in-chief 
of all the armies in the field. Grant at once laid 
his plans to have the armies all work together. 
General Sherman was left in command of the 
army of the West and Grant came to Virginia to 
fight General Lee. 

In the green month of May, 1864, all the armies 
were set in motion, and North and South came 
together for the last great struggle of tne war. 

Grant led his men into the Wilderness where 
General Hooker and his army had been sadly de- 
feated the year before. Lee was there to meet 
him, and a great battle was fought in the depth 
of the woods and thickets. It lasted two whole 
days, but neither side won. 

Then Grant marched towards Richmond and 
Lee hurried down to head him off. Several hard 



WAR ON SEA AND LAND 231 

battles were fought, the last being at Cold Har- 
bor, near Richmond. Here the Union army lost 
terribly. Ten thousand men were killed and 
wounded, while the Confederates, who were be- 
hind strong earthworks, lost only a thousand. 

General Grant saw he could not reach Rich- 
mond that way, so he crossed the James River and 
began a siege of Petersburg and Richmond. This 
siege lasted nine months, both sides digging instead 
of fighting till great heaps of earth were thrown 
up, on whose tops were hundreds of cannon. 

General Grant kept his men very busy, as you 
may see. But General Sherman's men were just 
as busy. He marched south from Chattanooga, 
and fought battle after battle until he had gone 
far into Georgia and captured the important city 
of Atlanta. General Hood, the Confederate 
commander, then made a rapid march to Ten- 
nessee, thinking that Sherman would follow him. 
But Sherman did not move. The brave General 
Thomas was there to take care of Hood and his 

army. ^, 

''Let him go; he couldn't please me better, 

said Sherman. 

What Sherman did was to cut loose from the 
railroads and telegraphs and march his whole 
army into the center of Georgia. For a whole 
month the people of the North heard nothing of 
him. His sixty thousand men might be starving 



232 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

for food, or might all be killed, so far as was 
known. It was November when they started and 
it was near Christmas when they were heard of 
again. 

They had lived on the country and destroyed 
railroads and stores, and at length they came to 
the sea at the city of Savannah. Three daring 
scouts made their way in a boat down the river 
by night and brought to the fleet the first news of 
Sherman's march. No doubt you have heard the 
song *' Marching through Georgia." That was 
written to describe Sherman's famous march. 

The South was now getting weaker, and weaker, 
and most men saw that the war was near its end. 
It came to an end in April, 1865. Grant kept 
moving south till he got round the Confederate 
earthworks at Petersburg, and Lee was forced to 
leave Richmond in great haste. 

The Union army followed as fast as it could 
march, and the cavalry rode on until it was ahead 
of the Confederates. Then General Lee saw that 
he was surrounded by an army far stronger than 
his own. He could fight no longer. His men 
were nearly starved. To fight would be to have 
them all killed. So on the 9th of April he of- 
fered his sword to General Grant, and the long 
and bloody war was at an end. 

No one was gladder of this than President Lin- 
coln, who had done so much to bring it about. 



WAR ON SEA AND LAND 233 

Poor man! five days afterwards he was shot in 
a theatre at Washington by an actor named John 
Wilkes Booth. This was done out of revenge for 
the defeat of the South. But the people of the 
South did not approve of this act of murder, and 
in Abraham Lincoln they lost one whom they 
would have found a good friend. 

Booth was followed and killed, but his death 
could not bring back to life the murdered Presi- 
dent, whom the people loved so warmly that they 
mourned for him as if he had been, like Washing- 
ton, the Father of his Country. It was a terrible 
crime, and it turned the joy which the people felt, 
at the end of the war, into the deepest sorrow 
and grief. 



CHAPTER XXIV 

THE WASTE OF WAR AND THE WEALTH OF PEACE 

LET US suppose that the history of the whole 
world is spread out before us like a pic- 
ture, and that we are looking down on it. 
What will we see? Well, we will see places 
where a terrible storm seems to have swept over 
the picture, and left only darkness and ruin in its 
track. And we will see other places where the 
sun seems to have poured down its bright beams, 
and all is clear and bright and beautiful. The 
dark places are those of war; the bright places 
are those of peace. All through history there 
have been times when men have gone out to kill 
and burn and do all the harm they could; and 
there have been other times when they stayed at 
home to work, and build up what war had cast 
down, and bring plenty and happiness to the na- 
tions. 

In the picture of our own history we see such 
dark and bright places. And the darkest of them 
all is the terrible Civil War, the story of which you 
have just read. For in this war our people fought 
against and killed one another, and all the harm 
234 



WASTE OF WAR 235 

was done at home, instead of In foreign lands. 
The war was a dreadful one. Hundreds of thou- 
sands of our people were killed or wounded, and 
the ground In hundreds of places was red with 
blood. Houses, barns and factories were burned, 
railroads were torn up, ships were sunk, growing 
crops were trampled Into the earth. And last of 
all came that horrid murder of our good and great 
President Lincoln, one of the best and noblest men 
who ever sat In the presidential chair. Such Is 
war — the most frightful thing we can think of 
or talk about. Some of my young friends may 
like to play soldier; but if they should grow up 
and get to be real soldiers they would find out 
what war means. Now, If we look again at the 
picture of our history, we shall see a great bright 
space of peace following the dark space of the 
Civil War. That is what I wish to tell you about 
now — the reign of peace, when everybody was 
busy at work in building up what had been torn 
down by the red hand of war, and our country 
grew faster than it had ever grown before. 

There is one thing I must say here. I have 
told you that slavery was the cause of the war. 
If there had been no slaves in the country there 
would have been no war. And the one good thing 
the war did for us was to get rid of the slaves. 
President Lincoln declared that all the slaves 
should be free, and since that time there has not 



236 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

been a slave In the land. So we can never have 
a war for that cause again. 

When the war was done, the soldiers marched 
back to their homes. Their old battle-flags, rent 
and torn by bullets, were put away as valued 
treasures; their rusty rifles, which had killed thou- 
sands of men, were given back to the government; 
they took up their axes, they went Into the fields 
with their ploughs, they entered the workshops 
with their tools, and soon they were all at work 
again, as If they had never seen a field of battle. 

This took place long before any of my young 
readers were born. But there are many old sol- 
diers living who took part in it, and when you see 
the veterans of the Grand Army of the Republic, 
marching with their ragged flags and battle- 
scarred faces, it may bring to you some vision of 
what they have seen, and make you think of the 
fallen comrades they left behind, dead or bleed- 
ing upon the battle-field. 

During your short lives there has been no war 
which came near to us in our homes. The angel 
of peace has spread her white wings over our land, 
and plenty and prosperity have been the rule. 
None of our young folks have known what It Is 
for an army of soldiers to march past their homes, 
destroying and burning, and leaving ashes and 
ruins where there had been happy homes and fer- 
tile fields. But in the past of our country this 



WASTE OF WAR 237 

happened to many as young as you, and they were 
glad that their hves were left them, after every- 
thing else was gone. 

Let us put the thought of war out of our minds, 
and go on to see what took place under the blessed 
reign of peace. The first thing of which I shall 
tell you was one of the most wonderful of all. 
You know how the telegraph wires spread over 
the country until they were many thousands of 
miles in length. In the next chapter you may 
read how the electric telegraph was invented. In 
the year after the war ended a still greater thing 
was done. A telegraph cable was laid under the 
ocean from Europe to America. This had been 
done before, but it had proved a failure. The 
new cable was a success, and since then a man in 
London has been able to talk with a man in New 
York as if he were not a hundred yards away. Of 
course, I do not mean with his voice, but with the 
click of the telegraph instrument. 

The year after that a great addition was made 
to the United States. There was a large region 
In the north, known as Russian America, which 
Russia offered to sell to this country for seven mil- 
lion dollars. Many people talked about this as 
some of their forefathers had talked about the 
purchase of Louisiana by President Jefferson. 
They said that It was a land of Ice and snow which 
Russia wanted to get rid of, and that It would be 



238 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

of no use to anybody. But it was bought for all 
that, and it has proven a very good bargain. 

This country we now call Alaska. We get 
there all the sealskins from which the rich and 
warm cloaks of the ladies are made. And most 
of the canned salmon, which some of you think 
very good food, come from Alaska. That coun- 
try is rich in furs and fish and timber; and that 
is not all, for it is rich in gold. Millions of 
dollars worth of gold are obtained there every 
year. It has been something like California, 
whose gold was not found till Americans got there 
to dig. 

These are not the only things that took place 
in the years after the war. Railroads were being 
built in all directions. East and west, north and 
south, they went, and travel became easier than it 
had been before. The greatest thing done in this 
way was the building of a railroad across the moun- 
tains and the plains to San Francisco, on the far 
Pacific coast, three thousand miles away from the 
Atlantic shores. Before that time men who 
wanted to go to California had to drag along over 
thousands of miles in slow wagon trains and 
spend weeks and months on the road. Now they 
could go there in less than a week. It was the 
, longest railroad that the world had ever seen, up 
to that time. 

While all this was going on, people were coming 



WASTE OF WAR 239 

to this country In great multitudes, crossing the 
ocean to find new homes in our happy land. They 
did not have to come in slow sailing ships as in 
former times, but were brought here in swift steam- 
ships, that crossed the seas almost as fast as the 
iron horse crossed the land. All these new people 
went to work, some in the cities and some in the 
country, and they all helped to make our nation 
rich and powerful. 

But you must not think that everything went 
well, and that we had no dark days. Every coun- 
try has its troubles, even in times of peace. War 
is not the only trouble. Great fires break out, 
storms sweep over the land, earthquakes shake 
down cities, and many other disasters take place. 
Of all these things, fire, when It gets beyond con- 
trol, is the most terrible; and it is of a frightful 
fire that I wish to speak. 

About the year 1831 a small fort stood near 
the shore of Lake Michigan, and around this a 
few pioneer families had built their homes, which 
were only rude log houses. In 1871, forty years 
afterwards, the fort and the huts had long been 
gone and a large city stood at that place. Its 
growth had been wonderful. Only forty years old 
and already it was one of the great cities of the 
country. This was the famous city of Chicago, 
which has grown more rapidly than any other 
great city ever known. 



240 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

One night in October a dreadful thing took 
place in this city. A cow kicked over a lamp in 
a stable. The straw on the floor took fire, and 
in a minute the blaze shot up into the air. The 
people ran for water, but they were too slow, and 
in a few minutes the whole stable was in flames. 
You may think that this was not of much account, 
but there happened to be a gale of wind, and soon 
great blazing fragments were flying through the 
air and falling on roofs squares away. It was not 
long before there was a terrible fire over almost 
the entire city. 

Chicago at that time was mostly built of wood, 
and the fire spread until it looked as if the whole 
great city would be burnt to ashes. For two days 
it kept on burning until the richest part of the 
city had gone up in smoke and flame. Many peo- 
ple were burned to death in the streets and two 
hundred million dollars worth of property was 
destroyed. It was the most frightful fire of mod- 
ern times. But Americans do not stop for fire 
or water. The city was built up again, far hand- 
somer than before, and it is now one of the great- 
est cities, not only of this country, but of the 
world. 

This was not the only disaster which came upon 
the country. In 1886 there was a frightful earth- 
quake in South Carolina, that shook down a great 
part of the ci-ty of Charleston. And in 1889 there 



WASTE OF WAR 241 

was a terrible flood that swept away the young 
city of Johnstown, in Pennsylvania, and drowned 
more than two thousand people. And there were 
tornadoes, or wind storms, in the west that blew 
down whole towns as you might blow down a 
house of cardboard with your breath. And there 
were great strikes and riots that were almost like 
war, and various other troubles. But all these 
could not stop the growth of the country. Every 
year it became richer. New people came, new 
factories were built, new fields were farmed, and 
the United States seemed like a great hive of in- 
dustry, and its people like so many bees, working 
away, day by day, and gathering wealth as bees 
gather honey. 

It not only got many of the old articles of 
wealth, but it found many new ones also. Never 
was there a country with so many inventors or 
men that have made things new and useful to 
everybody, and never were there more wonderful 
inventions. I have told you about some of our 
inventors; I shall have to speak of some more of 
them. There were hundreds of men busily at 
work at inventing new machines and tools, new 
things to help everybody — the farmer, the mer- 
chant, the workman in the factory, and the cook 
in the kitchen. It went on so that there was not 
much done by hand, as in old times, but nearly 
everything was done by machine. 



CHAPTER XXV 

THE MARVELS OF INVENTION 

IT Is not a pleasant thing to go hungry for 
twenty-four hours and to go many days with- 
out half enough to eat. I think all my 
readers will agree with me in this. I fancy none 
of you would like to find an empty table before 
you when the dinner bell rings. But this is a 
thing that has happened to many inventors; and 
one of these was Samuel F. B. Morse, to whose 
genius we owe the electric telegraph. 

You know about the invention of the steamboat, 
the locomotive, the cotton-gin and various other 
early inventions; but there have been many later 
inventions, and one of the most important of 
these is the telegraph, which tells us every day 
what is taking place over the whole world. 

Professor Morse was a New York artist who 
studied painting in Europe, and in the year 1832 
took passage home in the ship " Sully." One day 
a talk went on in the cabin of the ship. Dr. 
Jackson, one of the passengers, told how some per- 
sons in Paris had sent an electric current through 
several miles of wire In less than a second of time. 

242 



THE MARVELS OF INVENTION 243 

*' If that is the case," said Morse, " why could 
not words and sentences be sent in the same way? " 

" That's a good idea. It would be a great 
thing if we could send news as fast as lightning," 
said one of the passengers. 

'*Why can't we?" said Morse; "I think we 
can do it." 

Very likely the rest of the passengers soon for- 
got all about that conversation, but Morse did not. 
During the remainder of the voyage he was very 
quiet and kept much to himself. He was thinking 
over what he had heard. Before the ship had 
reached New York he had worked out a plan of 
telegraphing. He proposed to carry the wire in 
tubes underground, and to use an alphabet of dots 
and dashes, the same that is used by telegraphers 
to-day. 

When he went on shore Morse said to the cap- 
tain: " Captain, if you should hear of the tele- 
graph one of these days as the wonder of the 
world, remember that the discovery was made on 
board the good ship * Sully.' " 

" If I can make it go ten miles without stopping, 
I can make It go round the world," he said to a 
passenger. 

But It is easier to think out a thing than to put 
It In practice. Poor Morse was more than ten 
years In working out his plans and getting people 
to help him in them. He got out of money and 



244 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

was near starving, but he kept at it. After three 
years he managed to send a message through 
seventeen hundred feet of wire. He could read 
it, but his friends could not, and no one was ready 
to put money in such a scheme. They looked at 
it as a toy to amuse children. Then he went to 
Europe and tried to get money there, but he found 
the people there as hard to convince as those in 
America. 

" No one Is In such a hurry for news as all that," 
they said. " People would rather get their news 
in the good old way. Your wires work, Mr. 
Morse, but it would take a great deal of money 
to lay miles of them underground, and we are not 
going to take such chances as that with our money." 

Mr. Morse next tried to get Congress to grant 
him a sum of money. He wanted to build a wire 
from Baltimore to Washington and show how it 
would work. But it is never easy to get money 
from Congress, and he kept at It for five years in 
vain. 

It was the 3d of March, 1843. ^t twelve 
o'clock that night the session of Congress would 
end. Morse kept about the Senate chamber till 
nearly midnight, in hopes his bill would pass. 
Then he gave it up in despair and went to his 
boarding house. He was sure his little bill would 
not be thought of in the crowd of business before 



THE MARVELS OF INVENTION 245 

Congress and was greatly depressed in conse- 
quence. 

He came down to breakfast the next morning 
with a very sad face, hardly knowing how he was 
to pay his board and get home. He was met by 
a young lady, Miss Annie Ellsworth, who came 
to him with a smile. 

'* Let me congratulate you, Mr. Morse," she 
said. 

" For what, my dear friend? " 

*' For the passage of your bill." 

" What! " he said, in great astonishment; " the 
passage of my bill? " 

'' Yes; do you not know of it? " 

" No; it cannot be true! " 

" You came home too early last night, Mr. 
Morse. Your bill has passed, and I am happy 
to be the first to bring you the good news." 

" You give me new life. Miss Ellsworth," he 
said. *' For your good news I promise you this: 
when my telegraph line is laid, you shall have the 
honor of selecting the first message to be sent 
over it." 

Congress had granted only thirty thousand dol- 
lars. It was not much, but Morse went actively 
to work. He wanted to dig a ditch to lay his 
pipe in, through which the wire was to run. He 
got another inventor to help him, Ezra Cornell, 



246 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

who afterwards founded Cornell University. Mr. 
Cornell invented a machine which dug the ditch 
at a great rate, laid the pipe, and covered it in. 
In five minutes it laid and covered one hundred 
feet of pipe. 

But Cornell did not think the underground wire 
would work. 

*' It will work,'* said Morse. " While I have 
been fighting Congress, men have laid short lines 
In England which work very well. What can ie 
done there can be done here." 

For all that, It would not work. A year passed 
and only seven thousand dollars of the money were 
left, and all the wires laid were of no use. 

" If it won't go underground we must try and 
coax it to go over-ground," said Morse. 

Poles were erected; the wire was strung on glass 
insulators; it now worked to a charm. On May 
II, 1844, the Whig National Convention at Balti- 
more nominated Henry Clay for President, and 
the news was sent to Washington In all haste by 
the first railroad train. But the passengers were 
surprised to find that they brought stale news; 
everybody In Washington knew It already. It 
had reached there an hour or two before by tele- 
graph. That was a great triumph for Morse. 
The telegraph line was not then finished quite 
to Baltimore. When It reached there, on May 



THE MARVELS OF INVENTION 247 

24th, the first message sent was one which Miss 
Ellsworth had chosen from the Bible, " W^hat hath 
God wrought? " God had wrought wonderfully 
indeed, for since then the electric wire has bound 
the ends of the earth together. 

If I should attempt to tell you about all our 
inventors I am afraid it would be a long story. 
There is almost no end to them, and many of 
them invented wonderful machines. I might tell 
you, for instance, about Thomas Blanchard, who 
invented the machine by which tacks are made, 
dropping them down as fast as a watch can tick. 
This is only one out of many of his inventions. 
One of them was a steamboat to run in shallow 
water, and which could go hundreds of miles up 
rivers where Fulton's steamboat would have run 
aground. 

Then there was Cyrus McCormick, who in- 
vented the reaping machine. When he showed 
his reaper at the London W^orld's Fair in 1851, 
the newspapers made great fun of it. The Lon- 
don " Times " said it was a cross between a 
chariot, a wheelbarrow and a flying-machine. 
But when it was put in a wheat-field and gathered 
in the wheat like a living and thinking machine, 
they changed their tune, and the " Times " said 
it was worth more than all the rest of the Ex- 
hibition. This was the first of the great agri- 



248 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

cultural machines. Since then hundreds have 
been made, and the old-fashioned slow hand-work 
in the fields is over. McCormick made a fortune 
out of his machine. I cannot say that of all in- 
ventors, for many of them had as hard a time 
as Morse with his telegraph. Two of them, 
Charles Goodyear and Ellas Howe, came as near 
starving as Professor Morse. 

All the rubber goods we have to-day we owe 
to Charles Goodyear. Before his time India-rub- 
ber was of very little use. It would grow stiff in 
the winter and sticky in the summer, and people 
said it was a nuisance. What was wanted was a 
rubber that would stand heat and cold, and this 
Goodyear set himself to make. 

After a time he tried mixing sulphur with the 
gum, and by accident touched a red-hot stove with 
the mixture. To his delight the gum did not 
melt. Here was the secret. Rubber mixed with 
sulphur and exposed to heat would stand heat and 
cold alike. He had made his discovery, but it 
took him six years more to make it a success, and 
he never made much money from it. Yet every- 
body honors him to-day as a great inventor. 

Elias Howe had as hard a time with the sew- 
ing machine. For years he worked at it, and 
when he finished it nobody would buy it or use it. 
He went to London, as Morse had done, and had 
the same bad luck. He had to pawn his model 



THE MARVELS OF INVENTION 249 

and patent papers to get home again. His wife 
was very sick, and he reached home only in time to 
see her die. 

Poor fellow I life was very dark to him then. 
His invention had been stolen by others, who were 
making fortunes out of it while he was in need of 
bread. Friends lent him money and he brought 
suit against these robbers, but it took six years to 
win his rights in the courts. In the end he grew 
rich and gained great honor from his invention. 

There has been no man more talked of in our 
time than Thomas A. Edison. All of you must 
have heard of him. He went into business when 
he was only twelve years old, selling newspapers 
and other things on the cars, and he was so bright 
and did so well that he was able to send his par- 
ents five hundred dollars a year. When he was 
sixteen he saved the child of a station-master 
from being run over by a locomotive, and the 
father was so grateful that he taught him how to 
telegraph. He was so quick in his work that he 
become one of the best telegraph operators in the 
United States. 

After he grew up Edison began to invent. He 
worked out a plan by which he could send two 
messages at once over one wire. He kept at this 
till he could send sixteen messages over a wire, 
eight one way and eight the other. He made 
money out of his inventions, but the telegraph 



250 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

companies made much more. Instead of sending 
fifty or sixty words a minute, he showed them how 
they could send several thousand words a minute. 

Then he began experimenting with the electric 
light. He did not Invent this, but he made great 
improvements In it. The electric light could be 
made, but it could not be controlled and used be- 
fore Edison taught people how to keep It in its 
little glass bulb. How brilliantly the streets, the 
stores, and many of the houses are now lit up by 
electricity. All from Edison's wonderful discov- 
eries. 

Then there was the telephone, or talking tele- 
graph, which many of you may have used your- 
selves. That was not known before 1876; but 
people now wonder how they ever got along with- 
out it. It is certainly very wonderful, when you 
have to speak with somebody a mile or a hundred 
miles away, to ring him up and talk with him over 
the telephone wire as easily as If you were talking 
with some one in the next room. The telephone, 
as I suppose you know, works by electricity. It 
Is only another form of the telegraph. The tele- 
phone was not Invented by Edison, but by another 
American named Alexander Bell. But Edison 
Improved it. He added the " transmitter," which 
Is used in all telephones, and is very important in- 
deed. So we must give credit first to Bell and 
second to Edison for the telephone. 



THE MARVELS OF INVENTION 251 

Edison's most wonderful invention is the phono- 
graph. This word means " sound writer," One 
of you may talk with a little machine, and the 
sound of your voice will make marks on a little 
roll of gelatine or tinfoil within. Then when the 
machine is set going you may hear your own voice 
coming back to you. Or by the use of a great 
trumpet called a megaphone, it may be heard all 
over a large room. 

The wonderful thing Is that the sound of a 
man's voice may be heard long after he is dead. If 
they had possessed the phonograph In old times we 
might be able to hear Shakespeare or Julius Caesar 
speaking to-day. Very likely many persons who 
live a hundred or two hundred years from now 
may hear Edison's voice coming out of one of his 
own machines. Does not this seem like magic? 

In every way this is a wonderful age of Inven- 
tion. Look at the trolley car, shooting along with- 
out any one being able to see what makes It move. 
Look at the wheels whirling and lights flashing and 
stoves heating from electric power. Steam was 
the most powerful thing which man knew a cen- 
tury ago. Electricity has taken Its place as the 
most powerful and marvelous thing we know to- 
day. More wonderful than anything I have said 
is the power we now have of telegraphing without 
wires, and of telephoning In the same way. Thus 
men can now stand on the shore and talk with 



252 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

their friends hundreds of miles away on the broad 
sea. 

Such are some of the inventions which have 
been made in recent times. If you ask for more 
I might name the steam plow, and the typewriter, 
and the printing machine, and the bicycle, and the 
automobile, and the air-ship, and a hundred others. 
But they are too many for me to say anything 
about, so I shall have to stop right here. 



CHAPTER XXVI 

HOW THE CENTURY ENDED FOR THE UNITED 
STATES 

VERY likely many of my young readers live 
in the city of Philadelphia, which was 
founded by William Penn more than two 
hundred years ago on the banks of the broad Del- 
aware River, and where now many more than a 
million people make their homes. And many of 
you who do not live there, but who love your coun- 
try and are proud of its history, are likely to go 
there some time during your lives, to visit the birth- 
place of your noble nation. 

Have you ever thought that the United States, 
as an independent nation, was born in Philadel- 
phia? In that city stands the stately Independ- 
ence Hall, in which the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence was made and signed. You may see 
there the famous old bell, which rang out *' Lib- 
erty throughout the land ! " And you may stand 
in the room in which our grand Constitution was 
formed. So Philadelphia should be a place of 
pilgrimage to all true-hearted Americans, who 
wish to see where their country was born. 

253 



254 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

It was such a place of pilgrimage in the year 
1876. Then from every part of our country, 
from the North, the South, the West and the 
East, our people made their way In thousands to- 
wards that great city, which was then the proud 
center of all American thought. A hundred 
years had passed from the time the famous Dec- 
laration was signed, and the Centennial Anni- 
versary which marked the one hundredth year after 
this great event was being celebrated In the city 
which may be called the cradle of the American 
nation. 

A grand exhibition was held. It was called a 
*' World's Fair," for splendid objects were sent 
to it from all parts of the world, and our own 
country sent the best of everything it had to show, 
from Maine to California. On the broad lawns 
of Fairmount Park many handsome buildings 
were erected, all filled with objects of use or 
beauty, and more than ten million people passed 
through the gates, glad to see what America and 
the world had to show. 

If you wish to know what our own country 
showed, I may say that the most striking things 
were Its Inventions, machines that could do al- 
most everything which the world wants done. 
And the newest and most wonderful of all these 
things was the telephone. This magical inven- 
tion was shown there to the people for the first 



HOW THE CENTURY ENDED 255 

time, and the first voice shouted " Hallo ! " over 
the talking wire. 

In the years that followed centennial celebra- 
tions became common. In 1881 the centennial 
anniversary of the surrender of Cornwallls was 
celebrated at Yorktown. In 1882 the bl-centen- 
nlal (the two hundredth anniversary) of the 
landing of William Penn was celebrated at 
Philadelphia. A vessel that stood for the old 
ship " Welcome " sailed up the stream, and a man 
dressed hke the famous old Quaker landed and 
was greeted by a number of men who took the 
part of Indian chiefs. 

In 1887 Philadelphia had another grand anni- 
versary, that of the signing of the Constitution of 
the United States, which was celebrated by mag- 
nificent parades and processions, while the whole 
city was dressed In the red, white and blue. In 
1889 New York celebrated the next grand event 
In the history of the nation, the taking of the oath 
by Washington, our first President. 

The next great anniversary was that of the dis- 
covery of America by Columbus, four hundred 
years before. This was celebrated by a wonder- 
fully splendid exhibition at Chicago, the most beau- 
tiful that the world had ever seen. Columbus 
landed In October, 1492, and the buildings were 
dedicated In October, 1892, but the exhibition did 
not take place till the next year. Those who saw 



256 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

this exhibition will never forget it, and very likely 
some of my readers were among them. Its build- 
ings were like fairy palaces, so white and grand and 
beautiful; and at night, when it was lit up by 
thousands of electric lights, the whole place looked 
like fairy land. The world will not soon see any- 
thing more beautiful. 

I cannot tell of all the exhibitions. There were 
others, at New Orleans, Atlanta, and other cities, 
but I think you will be satisfied with hearing about 
the large ones. The Centennial at Philadelphia 
set the fashion. After that, cities all over the 
country wanted to have their great fairs, and many 
of the little towns had their centennial celebra- 
tions, with music and parades, speeches and lire- 
works. 

During all this time the country kept growing. 
People crossed the ocean In millions. Our pop- 
ulation went up, not like a tree growing, but like 
a deer jumping. In 1880 we had 50,000,000 
people. In 1900 we had half as many more. 
Just think of that! Over 25,000,000 people 
added In twenty years ! How many do you think 
we will have when the youngest readers of this 
book get to be old men and women? I am afraid 
to guess. 

As our people Increased In number they spread 
more widely over the country. Railroads were 
built everywhere, steamboats ran on all the 



HOW THE CENTURY ENDED 257 

streams, telegraphs and telephones came near to 
every man's front door, the post-offices spread 
until letters and newspapers and packages were 
carried to the smallest village in the land. No- 
body wanted to stay at home, in the old fashion. 
People thought nothing of a journey across the 
continent or the ocean. Wherever they were, they 
could talk with their friends by letter or telegraph, 
and they could go nowhere that the newspaper 
could not follow them. 

So the waste places of the country began rapidly 
to fill up. If you have ever seen an old-time 
map of our country you must have noticed places 
In the West marked " great desert," or " unknown 
territory," or by some such name. But people 
made their way Into these unknown regions and 
filled them up. First they went with their fam- 
ilies and household goods in great wagons. Then 
they went far more swiftly In railroad trains. 
Here they settled down and began farming; 
farther on, where there was not rain enough to 
farm, they raised cattle and sheep on the rich 
grasses; still farther, In the mountain regions, 
they set to work mining, getting gold, silver, cop- 
per. Iron and coal from the hard rocks. 

Cities grew up where the Indian and the buffalo 
had roamed. The factory followed the farmer; 
the engine began to puff Its steam Into the air, the 
wheels to turn, the machines to work, goods of all 



258 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

kinds to be made. The whole country became 
like a great hive of workers, where everybody was 
busy, and thousands of the people grew rich. 

But all this great v/estern country Y*^as not given 
up to the farmer, the miner and the wood-chopper. 
There were places v/hlch nature had made beauti- 
ful or wonderful or grand, and these were kept 
as places for all the people to visit. One of these 
was the beautiful Yosemite Valley, In California; 
another was the wonderful Yellov/stone Park, with 
its marvelous spouting springs; others were the 
groves of giant trees; still others were great 
forests, from which the government told the wood- 
choppers to keep out, for the woods had been set 
aside for the good or the pleasure of all the people 
of the land. 

Some of you may ask, what became of the old 
people of the country — the Indians, who were 
spread all over the West? There were hundreds 
of tribes of them, and many of them were bold 
and brave, and when they saw the white men push- 
ing into their country they fought fiercely for their 
homes. But they could not stand before the guns 
of the pioneers and the cannon of the soldiers, and 
in time they were all forced to submit. Then 
places were set aside for them and they were made 
to live in them. The Indians were not always 
treated well. They were robbed and cheated in 
a hundred ways. But that, I hope, is all over 




Custeir's Last Fight. 



HOW THE CENTURY ENDED 259 

now, for they are being well cared for and edu- 
cated, and they seem Hkely, before many years, to 
become good and useful citizens of our country. 

Now I have another story to tell. Our Civil 
War, which you have read about, ended in 1865. 
For thirty-three years after that — one-third of 
a century — we were at peace at home and abroad, 
and our country had the wonderful growth of 
which you have just read. Then, in 1898, almost 
at the end of the century, war came again. By 
good luck, it was not a big war this time, and it was 
one I can tell you about in a few words. 

It was pity and charity that brought us into this 
war. South of Florida is the large and fertile 
island of Cuba, which had long belonged to Spain, 
and whose people had been very badly treated. 
At length they said they could stand it no longer, 
so they took their guns, left their homes, and went 
to war with the soldiers of Spain. For two years 
they fought bravely. Their old men, and their 
women and children, who had stayed at home, 
helped them all they could; so the Spaniards drove 
these from their homes into the cities, and left 
them there with hardly anything to eat. Thou- 
sands of these poor wretches starved to death. 

You may be sure that our people thought this 
very wicked. They said that it ought to be 
stopped; but Spain would not do what they wished. 
Then they sent food to the starving people. Some 



26o THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

of It got to them and some of it was used by 
others. Everybody In our country felt very badly 
to see this terrible affair going on at our very 
doors, and the government was told that It ought 
to take some action. What the government did 
was to send one of its war-vessels, the " Maine," to 
the harbor of Havana, the capital of Cuba. 

Then something took place that would have 
made almost any country go to war. One dark 
night, while the " Maine " floated on the waters 
of the harbor, and nearly all her crew were fast 
asleep In their berths, a terrible explosion was 
heard under her, and the good vessel was torn 
nearly In half. In a minute she sank into the 
muddy bottom of the harbor, and hundreds of her 
sleeping crew were drowned. Only the captain 
and some of the officers and men escaped alive. 

I fancy all of you must know how angry our 
people felt when they heard-of this dreadful event. 
You were angry yourselves, no doubt, and said 
that the Spaniards had done this and ought to be 
punished by having Cuba taken from them. I do 
not think there were many Americans who did not 
feel like taking revenge for our poor murdered 
sailors. 

War soon came. In April, 1898, the Congress 
declared war against Spain and a strong fleet of 
Iron-clad ships was sent to Cuba. An army was 
gathered as quickly as possible, and the soldiers 



HOW THE CENTURY ENDED 261 

were put on board ship and sailed away to the 
south. There was a Spanish fleet In the harbor 
of Santiago de Cuba and an American fleet out- 
side keeping the ships of Spain like prisoners In 
the harbor; so the soldiers were sent to that place, 
and It was not long before an army was landed 
and was marching towards the city of Santiago. I 
am glad to say that the fighting did not last very 
long. There was a bold charge up hill by the 
Rough Riders and others In the face of the Span- 
ish guns, and the Spanish army was driven back 
to the city. Here they were shut up and soon sur- 
rendered, and the war In Cuba was at an end. 

But the Iron-clad ships In the harbor were not 
given up. On the 3d of July a brave dash for 
liberty was made. They came out at full speed 
where our great ships lay waiting, and soon there 
was one of the strangest fights that had ever been 
seen. The Spanish ships rushed through the 
waters near the coast, firing as they fled. After 
them came the American ships at full speed, firing 
as they followed. But not many of the Spanish 
balls touched the American ships, while the great 
guns of the Americans raked the Spaniards fore 
and aft. 

Soon some of their ships were on fire and had to 
be run ashore. In an hour or two the chase was 
at an end and the fine Spanish fleet was sunk and 
burning, with hundreds of Its crew killed, while 



262 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

on the American ships only one man had been 
killed. It was a wonderful flight and fight. I 
should tell you more about It, only that I have an- 
other story of the same kind to relate. 

Far away from Cuba, on the other side of the 
world. In the broad Pacific Ocean, near the coast 
of China, is a great group of Islands called the 
Philippines, which had long belonged to Spain. 
Here, In the harbor of Manila, the capital of the 
islands, was a Spanish fleet. There was an Ameri- 
can fleet In one of the harbors of China, under the 
command of Commodore George Dewey. And 
as soon as war had been declared Dewey was or- 
dered to go to Manila and sink or take the Span- 
ish fleet. 

Dewey was a man who thought it his duty to 
obey orders. He had been told to sink or take 
the Spanish fleet, and that was what he meant to 
try his best to do. Over the waters sped his ships, 
as swiftly as steam could carry them, and into the 
harbor of Manila they went at midnight while 
deep darkness lay upon the waters. It was early 
morning of the ist of May when the American 
ships rounded up in front of the city and came in 
sight of the Spanish fleet. This lay across the 
mouth of a little bay with forts to guard it on the 
land at each side. 

It was a great danger which Commodore 
Dewey and his bold followers faced. Before 



HOW THE CENTURY ENDED 263 

them lay the Spanish ships and the forts. There 
were torpedo boats which might rush out and 
sink them. There were torpedoes under the 
waters which might send the flagship itself to the 
bottom. Some men would have stopped and felt 
their way, but George Dewey was not that kind of 
a man. Without stopping for a minute after his 
long journey from China, he dashed on with the 
fleet and ordered his men to fire. Soon the great 
guns were roaring and the air was full of fire and 
smoke. 

Round and round went the American ships, 
firing as they passed. Every shot seemed to tell. 
It was not long before some of the Spanish ships 
were blazing, while hardly a ball had touched an 
American hull. After an hour or two of this hot 
work Dewey drew out and gave his men their 
breakfast. Then back he came and finished the 
job. When he was done, the whole Spanish fleet 
was sunk and burning, with hundreds of its men 
dead and wounded, while not an American ship 
was badly hurt and not an American sailor was 
killed. There had hardly been so one-sided a bat- 
tle since the world began. 

There, I have, as I promised, told you In few 
words the story of the war. Soon after a treaty 
of peace was signed and all was at an end. The 
brave Dewey was made an admiral and was 
greatly honored by the American people. 



264 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

If you should ask me what we gained from the 
war, I would answer that we gained in the first 
place what the war was fought for, the freedom of 
Cuba from the cruel rule of Spain. But we did 
not come out of it without something for our- 
selves. We obtained the fertile island of Porto 
Rico In the West Indies and the large group of 
the Philippine Islands, near the coast of Asia. 
These last named came as the prize of Dewey's 
victory, but I am sorry to say that there was a war 
with the people themselves before the United 
States got possession. During the war with Spain 
we obtained another fine group of islands, that 
known as Hawaii, In the Pacific Ocean. You can 
see from this that our country made a wide spread 
over the seas at the end of the nineteenth century. 
The winning of all these Islands was an event of 
the greatest Importance to the United States. It 
gave this country a broad foothold on the seas 
and a new outlook over the earth. Some of the 
proud nations of Europe had looked on this coun- 
try as an American power only, with no voice in 
world affairs. But when Uncle Sam set his left foot 
on the Hawaiian Islands, In the Central Pacific, 
and his right foot on the Philippine Islands, near 
the coast of Asia, these powers of Europe opened 
their eyes and began to get new ideas about the 
great republic of the West. It was plain that 
the United States had become a world power, and 



HOW THE CENTURY ENDED 265 

that when the game of empire was to be played 
the western giant must be asked to take a hand. 

This was seen soon after, when China began to 
murder missionaries and try to drive all white peo- 
ple from its soil. For the first time in history the 
United States joined hands with Europe in an Old 
World quarrel, and it was made evident that the 
world could not be cut up and divided among the 
powers without asking permission from Uncle 
Sam. But fortunately Uncle Sam wants to keep 
out of war. 

And now we are near the end of our long jour- 
ney. We have traveled together for more than 
four hundred years, from the time of Columbus to 
the present day, looking at the interesting facts of 
our country's history, and following its growth 
from a tiny seed planted in the wilderness to a 
giant tree whose branches are beginning to over- 
shadow the earth. We have read about what our 
fathers did in the times that are no more. We 
have learned something of what has been taking 
place during our own lives. There Is a new his- 
tory before us In which we shall live and act and 
of which our own doings will form part. A new 
century, the twentieth, has opened before us, and 
It only remains to tell what our country has done 
In the few years that have passed of this century. 



CHAPTER XXVII 

HOW A HUNTER BECAME PRESIDENT 

I THINK It very likely that all, or nearly all, 
who read this book were born before the 
new century — the one we call the twentieth 
— began. It Is a young century still. Yet there 
has been time enough for many things to take 
place In the country we call our own. Some of 
these you may remember. Others many of you 
were too young to know much about. So It Is my 
purpose here to bring the story of our country up 
to the present time. 

I have not said much about our Presidents, but 
there was a President elected In the first year of 
the twentieth century of whom I must speak, since 
his election led to a dreadful event. In the follow- 
ing year ( 1901) a beautiful exhibition v/as held at 
Buffalo, New York. It was called the Pan 
American Exhibition, and was intended to show 
what the nations of America had done In the 
century just closed. 

I shall say little about the splendid electrical 
display, the fountains with their colored lights, the 
shining cascades, the glittering domes and pinna- 

266 




Roosevelt Surprised by a Giant Hippopotamus. 



A HUNTER BECAME PRESIDENT 267 

cles, the caverns and grottoes, and all the other 
brilliant things to be seen, for I have to speak of 
something much less pleasant, the dark deed of 
murder and treachery which took place at this ex- 
hibition. 

President McKinley came to Buffalo early in 
September to see the fine display and let the people 
see him, and on the 6th he stood with smiling face 
while many hundreds of visitors passed by and 
shook hands with him. In the midst of all this 
there came a loud, sharp sound. A pistol had been 
fired. The President staggered back, with pallid 
face. Men shouted; women screamed; a crowd 
rushed towards the spot; the man who held the 
pistol was flung to the floor and hundreds surged 
forward in fury. "He has shot our President! 
Kill him! Kill him!" they cried. The guards 
had a hard fight to keep the murderer from being 
torn to pieces by the furious throng. 

The man who had shot the President belonged 
to a society called Anarchists, who hate all rulers 
and think It their duty to kill all kings and 
presidents. Poor, miserable wretch! he suffered 
the death he deserved. But his shot had reached 
Its mark, and after a week of fear and hope. 
President McKinley died. He was mourned by 
all the people as If each of them had lost a mem- 
ber of his or her own family. 

You probably know that when a President dies 



268 THE STORY OE OUR COUNTRY 

the Vice-President takes his place. McKinley's 
Vice-President was a capable man named Theodore 
Roosevelt. He was very fond of tramping 
through the wilds and of hunting wild beasts. 
At the time we speak of, when the news of the 
death of President McKinley was sent abroad, 
Vice-President Roosevelt was off on a long tramp 
through the Adirondack Mountains of New York, 
perhaps hoping to shoot a deer, or possibly a bear. 

When the news came, no one knew where he 
was, and dozens of the mountain-climbers were 
sent out to find him. As they spread out and 
pushed forward, the crack of rifles could be heard 
on all sides and megaphones were used to send 
their voices far through the mountain defiles. But 
hour after hour passed and the shades of evening 
were at hand, and still no answer came; no sign 
of Roosevelt and his party could be traced. Fi- 
nally, when they were near the high top of Mount 
Marcy, answering shots and shouts were heard, 
and soon the hunting party came in sight. 

When Mr. Roosevelt was told the news they 
brought — that the President was at the point of 
death — he could hardly believe it; for the last 
news had said that he was likely to get well. He 
knew now that he must get to Buffalo as soon as 
he could, so that the country should not be without 
a President, and he started back for the clubhouse 



A HUNTER BECAME PRESIDENT 269 

from which he had set out at a pace that kept the 
others busy to keep up with him. 

Night had fallen when he' reached the club- 
house, but there was to be no sleep for him that 
night. A stagecoach, drawn by powerful horses, 
waited his coming, and in very few minutes he 
was inside It, the coachman had drawn his reins 
and cracked his whip, and away went the horses, 
plunging into the darkness of the woods that over- 
hung the road. 

That was one of the great rides In our history. 
You would have said so if you had been there to 
see. There were thirty-five miles to be made be- 
fore the nearest railroad station could be reached. 
The road was rough and muddy, for a very heavy 
thunderstorm had fallen that day. Darkness over- 
hung the way, made more gloomy by the thick 
foliage of the trees. Here and there they stop- 
ped for a few minutes to change horses, and then 
plunged on at full speed again. What thoughts 
were in the mind of the solitary passenger whom 
fate was about to make President of the great 
United States, during that dark and dismal night, 
no one can tell. Fortune had built for him a 
mighty career and he was hastening to take up 
the reins of government, soon to be dropped by 
the man chosen to hold them. 

Alden's Lane was reached at 3 : 15 In the morn- 



270 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

ing and the horses were again changed. The road 
now before them was the worst of all, for it was 
very narrow in places and had deep ravines on 
either side, while heavy forest timber shut it in. 
But the man who handled the horses knew his 
road and felt how great a duty had been placed 
in his hands, and at 5:22 that morning, when the 
light of dawn was showing in the east, the coach 
dashed up to the railroad station at North Creek. 
Here a special train, the locomotive puffing out 
steam, lay waiting for its distinguished passenger. 

News of greater weight now greeted the trav- 
eller. He was told that the President was dead. 
He had passed away at Buffalo three hours before. 
The man who landed as Vice-President on that 
solitary platform, was now President of the United 
States. Only the oath of office was needed to 
make him such. 

Disturbed in mind by the thrilling news, the 
traveler of the night stepped quickly into the car 
that waited for him, and the engine darted away 
through the dawn of the nevv^ day. Speed, speed, 
speed, was the thought in the mind of the engineer, 
and over the track dashed the iron horse and its 
single car, often at a rate of more than a mile a 
minute. Hour after hour passed by as they 
rushed across the state. At 1 140 in the afternoon 
the train came rattling into Buffalo, and its pas- 
senger leaped to- the platform and made all haste 



A HUNTER BECAME PRESIDENT 271 

to the house of AInsley Wilcox, one of his special 
friends. There, that afternoon, he was sworn 
Into office as President of the United States, and 
the scene we have described came to an end, one 
of the most dramatic among those In our coun- 
try's history. Never before had a man been 
sought In the depths of a mountain wilderness and 
ridden through rain and gloom a whole night long, 
to be told at the end that he had become the ruler 
of one of the greatest nations on the earth I 

I have told you that Theodore Roosevelt was 
fond of hunting. While he was President he had 
to leave the wild animals alone, but he did another 
kind of hunting, which was to hunt for dishonesty 
and fraud among the great business concerns of the 
country. He said that every man ought to have 
an equal chance to make a living, and he had laws 
passed to help In this. 

This kind of hunting made him very popular 
among the people, which was shown by his being 
elected President by a large majority when the time 
came for the next Presidential election. He also 
won much fame by helping to put an end to the 
dreadful war between Russia and Japan, and men 
everywhere began to speak of him as the greatest 
of living rulers. 

While Mr. Roosevelt was President several 
things took place which are worth speaking about. 
One was the building of the Panama canal to 



272 THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY 

connect the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. It is not 
yet finished, but when it is done it will be the great- 
est canal on the earth. A second thing was the 
splendid World's Fair held at St. Louis in 1904, 
in memory of the purchase from France of the 
great Louisiana country a century before. Two 
years later the large city of San Francisco was de- 
stroyed by earthquake and fire, with great loss of 
life and property. 

One thing more must be spoken of, for with this 
President Roosevelt had much to do. This was to 
have great dams built on the mountain streams of 
the West, so as to bring water to millions of acres 
of barren lands and make them rich and fertile. 
Also, to save the forests, nearly 200,000,000 acres 
of forest land were set aside as the property of the 
nation and kept from the axes of the woodcutters. 

The time for another Presidential election came 
in 1908, but Mr. Roosevelt would not run for the 
office again. I fancy he was tired of it and wanted 
to do some real hunting, for he soon set out for 
Africa, the land of the largest and fiercest animals 
on the earth. Here Is the elephant, the rhinoceros, 
the lion, the wild buffalo and other savage beasts, 
and he spent a year in killing these animals and 
in keeping them from killing him. I have no 
doubt you would like to read of the exciting time 
he had in this great hunting trip, but I must stop 
here and leave it untold, for it is no part of the 
Story of Our Country. 



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